The Man in the Pink Bow
Chapter 01 - The Man in the Pink Bow
By six-thirty on Thursday evening, every man responsible for keeping Dominic Russo alive had pink fingernails.
Marco Bellini, who had once dragged Dominic out of an overturned car with a broken collarbone, sat in a gilded chair wearing cucumber slices over his eyes. Beside him, two broad-shouldered guards waited patiently for their polish to dry. A pink feather boa had been arranged around the shoulders of a third man, who looked as though he would rather face a federal grand jury.
The little girl in charge of this operation was five years old and could not yet tie her own shoes.
“Don't touch your faces,” Sophie instructed. “You'll ruin everything.”
Dominic stood in the ballroom doorway, briefcase in hand. The Chicago papers called him a mob boss; his lawyers preferred businessman. He had spent the afternoon negotiating with three furious contractors. Until that moment, he had believed the day could not surprise him further.
“Marco.”
Marco lifted one cucumber. “Sir.”
“What happened to my security team?”
“We were outnumbered,” Marco said.
Sophie turned. She wore a black princess dress with pink ribbons and a paper tiara that tilted over one bright green eye. Her curls had escaped their braid. There was a dab of glitter on her nose. She looked at Dominic as if he were late to an appointment.
“You're next, Mr. Dominic.”
“I have a meeting.”
“Then you need to look pretty.”
The men were suddenly interested in the carpet.
Dominic should have refused. He had rules about his house, rules about his employees, rules about who touched him. But Sophie was holding a tiny brush with solemn purpose, and for reasons he couldn't have explained, he remembered the sound of his younger brother laughing at him years ago.
He put down his briefcase.
When Emma was hired, she'd asked whether Sophie could come on evenings when her babysitter was ill. Dominic had almost refused. Rosa reminded him that he had once broken her best vase playing baseball indoors. The vase had been replaced. A lonely childhood could not be.
“Five minutes.”
Sophie considered. “Seven.”
“Six.”
“Okay. But the bow stays.”
She installed him in the largest gold armchair, fitted a fluffy pink headband around his dark hair, and draped the boa over his black shirt. Marco made a choking sound that he disguised as a cough. Dominic looked at him without moving his head.
“I assume,” Dominic said, “there will be no photographs.”
“Of course not,” Marco replied, just as the youngest guard hastily turned his phone facedown.
Sophie dabbed the brush against Dominic's cheek. “You have to shut your eyes. You're a customer.”
“I've never been a customer in a place that threatens me.”
“Then you haven't been to a real spa.”
That earned a laugh, even from Dominic. It felt strange in his throat. Sophie leaned back to inspect him, then frowned as though she had noticed a structural flaw.
"You always look like somebody ate your birthday cake," she said.
Marco pretended to examine a loose thread on his sleeve. Dominic considered asking the child whether she knew what an insult was. Instead he said, "Maybe they did."
"Then we will make you another one." She touched his cheek with the brush, careful not to scratch him. The sweetness of the gesture embarrassed him more than the feather boa. He hadn't realized how long it had been since anyone in the house had assumed he could be made happy by something small. This ballroom, all chandeliers and white roses, had hosted fundraisers, weddings, and wakes. Since his brother Matteo's death six years earlier, Dominic could not remember hearing such unguarded laughter in it.
At the entrance, Emma Carter appeared carrying a stack of clean napkins. She stopped so abruptly that one slipped onto the floor.
“I'm so sorry,” she said. “I was upstairs changing the linens. Sophie, sweetheart, you weren't supposed to bother anyone.”
“She didn't,” Marco said. “We volunteered.”
“You did not,” Sophie informed him. “I booked you.”
Emma's tired face softened. She had started working in the mansion eleven weeks earlier, cleaning guest rooms and helping in the kitchen. Dominic knew little about her beyond the references his house manager had checked, the fact that she was quiet, and the way her daughter always thanked the cooks by name.
He had allowed Sophie to stay during Emma's late shifts because his mother insisted that no child should spend an evening in an empty apartment merely to make a rich man comfortable.
Now Emma came forward, folding the fallen napkin in her hands.
“Come on. We have to get home.”
Sophie was about to protest when she glanced past the tall windows overlooking the west garden. The brush stopped in midair. Her face changed in a way no child's face should have to change: the playfulness did not fade gradually. It went out all at once.
“Mommy,” she whispered.
Emma followed her gaze. The garden beyond the glass lay in the last amber light of the day. A delivery van had parked beside the service drive. A man stood near the old stone fountain, too far away for Dominic to see his features.
Emma set the napkins down. One hand moved instinctively to the back of Sophie's neck.
“We need to go,” she said.
Sophie slipped her little fingers into Dominic's tattooed hand. A moment earlier she had been ordering him to sit straight. Now she held on as though he were the only solid thing in the room.
“The bad man came again.”
Dominic leaned toward her, keeping his voice level. “Which man, sweetheart?”
“The one who says I shouldn't remember.”
A muscle tightened in Emma's jaw. She looked toward the side entrance, calculating a route to the kitchen. Dominic had seen that look on people who knew an exit was no longer an ordinary door.
“Marco,” he said. “Please check the garden. No excitement.”
Marco removed his cucumber slices and stood. The other guards rose too, pink bows and all, suddenly silent professionals again. Dominic turned to Emma.
“Has someone been bothering you?”
“No. It's a mistake. Sophie gets frightened sometimes.”
“Mommy,” Sophie said, offended by the lie. “He was at our old house.”
Emma lowered her eyes. Her fingers tightened around the child's shoulder, then deliberately loosened. Dominic noticed that small act of control more than he would have noticed tears.
Outside, the figure near the fountain moved behind the van. Marco reached the glass doors. Dominic drew Sophie gently toward the inner wall, away from the windows.
“The headband can come off now,” he told her.
She shook her head. “It's good luck.”
Dominic left the ridiculous headband on without caring who saw. He could hear the service door click open in the distance. Emma had gone very pale.
May you like
Then Sophie looked up at him and said, so quietly that only he could hear, “He told me my daddy was a bad man too.”
And Dominic, who had spent six years refusing to hear his dead brother's name spoken in this house, suddenly knew there was one question he could no longer avoid.
