Chapter 8 - The Price of the TicketThe morning sun didn't break through the clouds; the gray mist simply turned a shade lighter, like wet wool drying in an attic.
By seven o'clock, a black town car with tinted windows was idling in the narrow alley below the dry cleaner. The driver—a heavy-shouldered man in a gray suit named Paolo whom Elena remembered from the old days on the docks—was standing by the rear door with an umbrella large enough to cover a small boat.
Inside apartment 3B, the packing was finished in less than twenty minutes.
There were no trunks. There were only two canvas duffel bags containing Elena’s clothes, the Singer sewing machine packed carefully into its wooden case, and a small cardboard box of Lily’s picture books and wooden toys.
Lily was bouncing on the edge of the cot, her red coat zipped to her chin, watching Dante load the bags with wide-eyed fascination.
"Are we going to the place with the big boats?" she asked, looking up at him as he hoisted her canvas bag over his shoulder.
"We're going to a house by the water," Dante said, his voice softening just enough for the harsh edges to disappear. "A house with a yard where the grass doesn't turn to mud when it rains."
Elena stood by the empty table, her fingers trailing over the wood where her sewing machine had sat for four years. The apartment looked smaller now that it was empty—just four walls of peeling plaster and the faint, lingering smell of lemon oil and damp wool.
"The landlord will keep the security deposit," she said, almost to herself.
"The landlord won't be worrying about deposits," Dante said from the doorway. "He sold the building to one of my holding companies an hour ago. The new management is going to tear it down and put up a parking garage."
Elena turned to look at him, her eyebrows arching in that familiar, exasperated way that used to make him laugh in the back rooms of the old cafes.
"You bought the building just to tear it down?"
"I don't like the neighborhood," Dante said. "The air is bad for the lungs."
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He held out his hand. It was a large, scarred hand—the hand that had signed death warrants, collected debts, and held a pistol in the dark of a tenement hallway. But as Elena looked at it, she saw something else: the hand that had held hers under the running water in his father's kitchen five years ago, before the world caught fire.
She didn't hesitate. She stepped across the threshold, placed her hand in his, and let him lead her down the stairs.
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