🦖 The Boy With the Dinosaur Who Made the Mafia Boss Apologize

Chapter 04 - Vivian Sends Her Love

Adrian took the phone from my hand only because I let him.

He looked at the photograph once.

Then all the softness disappeared.

There was the man I remembered from rooms where other men lowered their voices. Stillness first. Violence never wasted. Thought before motion.

“Do not move,” he said.

My laugh came out sharp.

“Wrong sentence.”

He stopped.

Closed his eyes once.

Then handed the phone back.

“Stay with Eli, please. Lock the bedroom door. I am going to check the apartment.”

Better.

Not enough, but better.

I went into the bedroom. Eli slept on his side, Pickle tucked under his chin, unaware that adults had managed to make even sleep dangerous. I locked the door and dragged a dresser in front of it because motherhood makes engineers of desperate women.

From the hallway came quiet movement.

A door opening.

A floorboard sighing.

Then nothing.

Waiting is its own kind of punishment.

I sat beside Eli and watched his chest rise and fall. I thought of Vivian Vale’s dining room, her long polished table, the way she once told me my voice “carried” when what she meant was that I should speak less. I thought of Mark Sable’s folder. The hotel photo. Adrian’s half sister.

I thought of how easily a life can be turned by people who understand paperwork.

A knock came at the bedroom door.

“Nora. It’s me.”

I did not move the dresser.

“What is the name of Eli’s dinosaur?”

A pause.

“Pickle.”

“What did Eli say Pickle was?”

“Generous, but not all the way.”

Only then did I pull the dresser back.

Adrian stood alone.

“No one’s here,” he said. “But someone was.”

In the living room, the window over the fire escape had been opened from outside. Not forced. Opened with a key.

Margaret Sloan arrived eleven minutes later with her hair wet from rain and a face like judgment day. Behind her came her sister, Elise, who owned the building and swore the apartment keys were kept in a locked box downstairs.

The box was still locked.

One key was missing.

Elise looked physically ill.

“No one has used that key in years.”

“Someone knew it existed,” Margaret said.

Adrian looked at the window.

“So did my mother.”

I turned.

“You said this place wasn’t connected to you.”

“It isn’t.”

“Then how?”

Margaret answered before he could.

“Because Vivian and I have history.”

The room shifted.

Adrian looked at her.

Margaret Sloan, who had seemed unmovable from the first minute I met her, suddenly looked older.

“I represented your aunt Claire,” she said.

Adrian’s face lost a fraction of color.

“My aunt died when I was twelve.”

“No,” Margaret said. “Your aunt was placed in a private psychiatric facility in Vermont after she tried to leave your father’s organization with records Vivian wanted buried. Your mother told the family Claire died to avoid scandal.”

I sat slowly on the arm of the couch.

Adrian said nothing for so long I thought he might not have heard.

Then he asked, “Is she alive?”

“Yes.”

“Where?”

Margaret held his gaze.

“Somewhere your mother hasn’t found.”

The words landed like stones dropped one by one into deep water.

My fear had always been personal. My apartment. My son. My marriage.

But Vivian’s reach was older than me.

Older than Adrian’s cruelty.

Older, maybe, than Adrian’s belief that he had any control at all.

A small sound came from the bedroom.

Eli stood there rubbing his eyes.

“Mommy?”

I reached for him.

Adrian stepped back immediately, giving space without needing to be told.

Good.

I hated that I noticed.

Eli pointed to the window.

“There was a lady.”

Every adult in the room stopped.

I knelt.

“What lady, baby?”

“The quiet lady.”

My mouth went dry.

“When?”

“When I was pretending sleep.”

Adrian crouched across from him, careful to stay farther away than me.

“What did she look like?”

Eli frowned.

“Like Grandma in the picture, but not Grandma.”

“I don’t have pictures of my mother,” I said.

Eli looked at Adrian.

“His grandma.”

Vivian.

I pulled Eli into my arms.

Adrian’s face went cold.

“She was here?”

Eli shook his head.

“No. Phone lady.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“She was on the little square.”

Margaret moved first.

She went to the bookshelf, then the lamp, then the smoke detector.

Adrian turned toward the stuffed dinosaur in Eli’s hand.

His voice dropped.

“Nora.”

I followed his gaze.

Pickle had a tiny seam along his belly I did not remember seeing before.

“No,” I whispered.

Adrian took one slow step closer.

“May I?” he asked Eli.

Eli clutched the dinosaur.

“Will it hurt him?”

“No.”

“Promise?”

“I promise.”

Eli looked at me.

I nodded, though everything inside me was screaming.

Adrian turned Pickle over with hands that could frighten grown men and were now gentle enough to handle a child’s toy. He opened the seam with two fingers.

Inside, beneath the stuffing, was a flat black device with a blinking red light.

Eli whispered, “Pickle has a heart?”

Adrian looked at the device.