"“Will You Buy This Portrait?”—The Mafia Boss Stopped Cold When He Recognized Her Face, Then the Triplets Begged for Their Mother

The apartment was small, three rooms under the eaves of the roof where the ceilings sloped down so low that a man of my height had to watch his head near the windows. It was clean—painfully clean, the kind of cleanliness maintained by someone who was fighting a constant war against the dust of an old building because her lungs couldn't handle the alternative.

In the corner of the small kitchen area, an old metal easel stood near the window. On the counter next to it was a small, round shaving mirror with a magnifying side, surrounded by half-empty tubes of oil paint and jars of turpentine that had been sealed tight to keep the fumes down.

That was where she had painted it. Looking into a five-dollar mirror from a pharmacy, while her daughters watched her disappear.

"You shouldn't be here," Margot said, leaning her lower back against the kitchen counter. She was breathing through her mouth, her chest rising and falling in shallow, jagged hitches. "I took precautions, Roman. I didn't use the trust accounts. I didn't call anyone from the old neighborhood. I changed my name legally in Delaware before I came back here."

"You did a good job," I said, setting the pharmacy bag on the small wooden table that sat between two mismatched chairs. I pulled the painting from under my coat and set it gently against the table leg, face out. "Six years. If your daughters hadn't been the smartest fundraisers in Center City, I’d still be sitting at my desk wondering which continent you died on."

She looked at the portrait of herself. A strange, sad little smile touched her lips. "They took it? I told them it was drying in the closet. I told them I was going to sell it to the gallery on Green Lane next week."

"They knew the gallery on Green Lane wouldn't give them enough for the blue inhaler," I said. I stepped closer to her, ignoring the way she stiffened, the way her hand went instinctively to her ribs as if to protect herself from the sudden proximity of my life. "Why didn't you tell me, Margot?"

"Tell you what?" she snapped, a flash of the old, fierce Margot Ellison returning to her eyes before a violent fit of coughing cut her off. She doubled over, her face turning an angry, dangerous red.

I didn't ask for permission. I reached out and caught her by the shoulders, steadying her against me while she coughed into a handkerchief. She felt light, small, like a bird caught in a winter storm. When the fit passed, she remained leaning against my chest for three seconds longer than necessary, her forehead resting against the lapel of my coat.

"Tell me about the girls," I said softly into her hair. "Tell me why I have three daughters with my mother's eyes who are currently selling oil paintings on Walnut Street to pay for your oxygen."

She pulled away slowly, her eyes wet but her jaw set. "Because they’re mine, Roman. And because if my father’s family or your father’s friends knew they existed, those three little girls would have spend their lives being chips on a poker table. You know what your world does to children. Look at what it did to you."

"I am the head of this city now, Margot," I said, my voice dropping into that quiet, heavy register that made grown men look at the floor. "Nobody touches what’s mine. Nobody even looks at it without my leave."

"And how many people had to die for you to get that chair?" she whispered. "How many cars had to blow up? I left because I didn't want to wake up one morning and find a funeral notice where my husband used to be. I didn't want my children growing up in a house where the windows are made of bulletproof glass."

The door behind us clicked open.

The three sisters walked in. Clara was first, holding a greasy brown paper bag that smelled of fried food, her face still red from the cold. Iris and June followed, their small boots covered in city mud. They stopped in a neat, identical row when they saw me standing in their kitchen.

Clara looked at her mother, then at the white pharmacy bag on the table, then at me.

"You found her," Clara said.

"I found her," I said.

June, the smallest one with the oversized scarf, walked over to the table and picked up the long receipt I had left sticking out of the bag. She looked at the blue ink, her little brow furrowing as she tried to read the numbers.

"Mama," June whispered, her eyes wide as she looked up at Margot. "The red letters are gone. The man in the coat fixed the machine."

Margot looked at me, her eyes filling with a different kind of tears—not the old anger, but the heavy, crushing weight of a mother who had just been relieved of a burden she had been carrying alone until her bones cracked.