🎀 THE MAFIA BOSS WORE PINK—THEN SHE SAW THE BAD MAN

Chapter 08 - The Women Who Wouldn't Leave

Mrs. Kowalski had not been abducted. That was the first thing Judith established, and Emma was grateful for the distinction. The seventy-nine-year-old widow had been taken to a temporary senior residence after signing a form she believed arranged transportation for a medical appointment. She was frightened and angry, but she was safe.

The relocation company refused to provide a copy of the form until Judith threatened to seek a court order. By then half the residents of Harbor House were gathered in the common room, their coats still on, the red notices in their hands.

“I paid for my apartment,” said Mrs. Feldman, a former school secretary with a cane. “If they want me gone, they can explain it to my grandchildren.”

“Don't bring your grandchildren into it,” Elena said. “They'll only tell you to be reasonable.”

The women laughed, but not much. Mrs. Pearson kept smoothing a red notice on her knee as if ironing it flat might change the words. Mrs. Kowalski's neighbor had already removed family photographs from her walls, certain that movers would come before she could find boxes. Elena watched the two of them and quietly asked someone to put the kettle on. There were ways to resist that looked very much like making tea. Several had lived in the building longer than Dominic had been in business. Their furniture, recipes, neighbors, and routines were tangled in those rooms. To call it a property dispute seemed inadequate.

Judith stood by the window with a stack of notices. She explained the difference between an immediate safety evacuation and a voluntary relocation. The building had not been condemned by the city. Lakepoint had retained a private engineering firm whose preliminary report mentioned moisture behind the upper walls, not imminent collapse.

“So we can stay?” someone asked.

“For now, the owner has not shown me lawful grounds to force you out today,” Judith said. “But this is not finished.”

Dominic, standing near the back, watched Emma move from one woman to another, finding chairs, fetching water, writing telephone numbers. Nobody looked to him for instructions. It was an uncomfortable and necessary experience.

Elena finally approached. “Are you the one whose name is on the sale?”

“Yes.”

“Then you can start by carrying those boxes upstairs.”

He did. By the time he'd made four trips, his expensive suit had picked up dust from the stair rail, and a woman named Mrs. Pearson had corrected the way he stacked canned soup. Marco, in the doorway, seemed very interested in the ceiling.

Emma's phone buzzed. A message from an unknown number showed a photograph of Sophie at the mansion kitchen table. The image had been taken that morning through a window. Beneath it were two words: GIVE IT BACK.

Emma felt her stomach drop. She looked across the room to Dominic and did not move until he came to her.

He studied the screen. “Sophie is with my mother and three guards. I'll have Marco check.”

“Someone stood outside your kitchen and photographed my child.”

“Yes.”

“Then don't tell me she's safe because there are men in suits around her.”

He looked at her for a moment, then nodded. “You're right.”

He called Rosa directly. She answered at once. Sophie was making paper crowns for the cooks. Marco checked the camera coverage and discovered that the photograph had been taken by someone inside a maintenance courtyard accessible with a staff key. They closed the courtyard and asked the police to preserve the evidence. Dominic did not suggest hunting anyone down.

Emma sat on the common-room stairs, her phone faceup beside her. Elena joined her with two mugs of tea. The old woman did not ask whether Emma was all right. She had raised four children and knew such questions could make a person come apart at the wrong moment.

“I saw your boy here,” Elena said.

“My boy?”

“Matteo. He was too young to carry all this worry, but he did. Once I asked him why he bothered. He said, 'Because these women gave money they could have spent on themselves.'”

Emma laughed once, painfully. “He said things like that.”

“Sometimes he was a fool, though. He thought telling the truth was enough to make people listen.” Elena handed over the tea. “It isn't. You need witnesses, and you need to keep showing up.”

That afternoon a city housing advocate came at Judith's request. The residents voted to appoint three representatives for the legal proceedings, including Elena. They also agreed that any temporary move, if necessary, would be arranged through a nonprofit agency they trusted, not Lakepoint's contractors. It was the first decision in weeks they had made together without being hurried.

One woman pressed a packet of homemade cookies into Dominic's hands before he left. He tried to refuse, embarrassed that she was thanking him for work he should have helped prevent. She insisted. “My mother taught me to feed people before I argue with them,” she said. “It doesn't mean I'm done arguing.” Dominic carried the cookies back to the car without opening them.

Dominic received a call from his bank. An account associated with his old holding company had been frozen pending a compliance review. A reporter had left a message asking whether the Russo family intended to displace elderly residents for a luxury development.

He could have denied everything. Instead he told the reporter that the transaction was disputed, that the residents had rights, and that he was cooperating with an independent lawyer. His publicist nearly fainted when she heard.

Back at the mansion that evening, Rosa asked why he looked as if he'd lost a fight.

“I carried canned peaches up three flights of stairs,” he said.

She smiled. “Your father would have approved.”

Emma watched from the doorway with Sophie asleep against her shoulder. For a moment the scene resembled a family at the end of a difficult day, except that everyone was keeping a little distance from the peace.

Judith arrived with a new filing. Lakepoint had applied for an expedited hearing, asserting that the residents' supposed equity shares were not recorded and had no legal effect. The hearing was now set for Monday, four days away.

“There is a greater problem,” she said, setting down the papers. “They've attached a declaration claiming Matteo confessed to falsifying every one of those residents' receipts.”