Chapter 2 - The Garden Cottage
The gravel of the courtyard crunched beneath Alessandro’s boots. He did not look back at the main house, though he knew the security cameras mounted on the eaves were tracking his movement. In the security booth near the gate, his men would be sitting up straight, their hands hovering over their holstered weapons as they watched their boss carry a wet, towel-wrapped toddler across the lawn toward the servant’s quarters.
The cottage was small, its stone walls covered in climbing ivy that had turned brown and dry from the salt air. It had been built in the twenties, during the height of the family’s first great fortune, when his grandfather had employed fourteen gardeners to keep the roses looking like they belonged in a palace in Naples. Now, the garden was mostly empty, the rose bushes pruned back to hard, thorny knuckles by a landscaping service that came once a fortnight.
Alessandro did not knock. He pushed the heavy oak door open with his shoulder.
The interior of the cottage was clean, but it had the sparse, cold feel of a room where nothing belonged to the person who lived in it. There were no pictures on the mantelpiece, no toys on the small braided rug in the center of the floor. A single wooden chair sat by the cold hearth, and on the small table in the kitchen corner, there was a loaf of stale bread wrapped in a white tea towel.
In the small bedroom at the back, Sophia Rossi lay beneath a pile of heavy wool blankets. Her face was the color of skimmed milk, her dark hair wet with sweat and sticking to her cheeks like ink lines. Her breathing was fast and shallow, whistling in her chest with a dry, rattling sound that Alessandro recognized all too well.
It was the sound his brother Michael’s chest had made during the three days he had lay dying in the clinic in New Jersey after the car window had shattered.
"Mr. Moretti," Sophia whispered. She tried to raise her head from the pillow, her eyes wide with a sudden, desperate surge of maternal adrenaline as she saw Emma in his arms. "Emma... oh God, what did she do? Did she go into the house?"
"She was washing my clothes, Sophia," Alessandro said. He walked to the side of the bed and set Emma down gently on the edge of the mattress. The child immediately crawled under the blanket, curling her small, dry body against her mother’s ribs.
"I'm sorry," Sophia gasped, her hand shaking as she reached out to smooth her daughter’s hair. Her skin was so hot Alessandro could feel the heat radiating from her from two feet away. "I was... I was only going to sleep for an hour. The fever came on so fast after the breakfast service. I didn't want to leave the kitchen dirty, but I couldn't stand."
"Why did you not call for the house doctor?" Alessandro asked.
Sophia let out a dry, rattling laugh that turned into a hacking cough. She pressed her hand to her chest, her face twisting with pain. "The doctor? Mr. Moretti, I am the maid. The doctor is for you. For your guests. I cannot... I cannot pay for a man who drives a Mercedes to look at my throat."
"The men who work on this estate are my responsibility," Alessandro said, his voice hardening. "Their health is my concern."
"I am not one of your men, sir," Sophia said softly. She looked at him with a strange, clear dignity that her fever could not diminish. "I am the woman who cleans your toilets. If I am sick, you find another. That is how the world works. I know that. My mother knew that in Palermo."
"Palermo is three thousand miles away," Alessandro said. "And my father did not build this house so that women would die of neglect in his backyard."
He reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone, dialing the private number of Dr. Kenneth Vance, a man who had extracted three bullets from Alessandro’s shoulder without ever filing a report with the police or the medical board.
"Kenneth," Alessandro said when the line clicked. "I need you at the Oyster Bay estate. Now."
"Is it the shoulder again?" Vance asked, his voice dry and professional.
"No. I have a woman with a high fever. Lungs are congested. She is breathing like she has glass in her chest."
There was a short pause on the line. "Alessandro, I am a surgeon. I don't do house calls for influenza."
"You do when I ask," Alessandro said. "And you will bring antibiotics and whatever else is necessary to treat a child if she has caught it. I will have the gate open for you."
He hung up before the doctor could object.
Sophia was watching him, her hand still resting on Emma’s back. "You shouldn't do this. The others... they will talk."
"Who will talk?"
"Your brother's friends. The men who come to the office at night. They look at me like I am a piece of wood when they pass me in the hall. If they see you coming here... if they see you paying for a doctor for the maid..."
"They will say nothing," Alessandro said, "because they know what happens to men who speak my name in the wrong tone."
But even as he spoke the words, he knew she was right. The house was not a home; it was a hive of eyes. His underbosses, his captains, the couriers who brought the weekly envelopes of cash—they all watched him for any sign of softness, any indication that the Wolf was becoming old, or worse, kind. In their world, kindness was a disease that preceded a coup.
"Stay here," Alessandro told her. "I am going to have the kitchen prepare some broth. And Emma will stay with you."
"Thank you, Mr. Moretti," Sophia whispered.
As he turned to leave, Emma called out from beneath the blanket. "Mr. Moretti?"
He paused in the doorway. "Yes, Emma?"
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"You're not mad about the shirt?"
Alessandro looked down at his own hand, where the soap from her small fingers had dried into a thin, white crust. "No, Emma. The shirt is clean enough."
