134. 🍼 The Ultrasound Hidden Inside the Mafia Boss’s Private Safe

Chapter 03 - The Name on the Papers

Mina stared at the text until the letters blurred.

Sarah Jenkins had not existed outside the envelope beneath Alfred’s penthouse floor.

No one should have known the name.

Not Alfred.

Not Lev.

Not the men in the second SUV.

Especially not the person who had just sent the message.

The phone slipped slightly in her wet hand.

“Read it to me,” Alfred said.

She hated that he knew there was something to read.

“No.”

“Mina.”

“You don’t get every piece of me just because you found one I hid.”

Lev’s sedan swung sharply beneath an elevated road. The city darkened around them. Water dripped from concrete overhead in thin, dirty curtains. Behind them, the SUV followed with the confidence of people who had done this before.

Mina’s stomach rolled.

She pressed a hand to her mouth.

“Pull over,” she whispered.

“Not here,” Lev said.

“I’m going to be sick.”

Lev’s jaw tightened.

Alfred heard anyway.

“Is it the baby?”

The word baby did not belong in his mouth yet.

It sounded too intimate, too late, too dangerous.

“It’s the chase,” she said.

Lev made one more turn, then another, moving through alleys and narrow streets that did not appear designed for expensive cars. The second SUV overshot the last turn and disappeared beyond a row of brick warehouses.

Lev drove six more blocks before stopping behind a shuttered church with boarded windows and a crooked sign for a community food pantry.

Mina opened the door and leaned out into the rain.

Nothing happened except humiliation.

Her body betrayed her with dry heaves while Lev stood several steps away pretending not to notice. On the phone, Alfred stayed silent. That, somehow, was kinder than comfort.

When she could breathe again, Lev held out a sealed bottle of water.

Mina looked at it.

“It came from the glove compartment,” he said. “I didn’t poison you while driving.”

She laughed once, weakly.

“Costello humor?”

“No, ma’am. Mine is worse.”

She took the bottle.

The old church door opened before she finished drinking.

A woman in her sixties stood inside wearing a dark wool dress, a cardigan, and the expression of someone who had seen enough foolish men to stop being impressed by any of them.

“Get her in before she catches pneumonia,” the woman said.

Mina did not move.

Lev turned. “Sister Agnes.”

“I’m not a sister anymore.”

“You’ll always be Sister Agnes to me.”

“That is your failure of imagination.”

She looked at Mina.

“I’m Agnes Bell. This building belongs to nobody useful. Come inside.”

Mina hesitated.

The phone was still against her ear.

Alfred said, “Agnes helped my mother before my father married her.”

“You trust her?”

“Yes.”

“Then why have I never heard of her?”

“Because I trust her.”

Mina hated that answer for being sensible.

Inside, the church smelled of old wood, radiator heat, dust, and tea. Folding tables lined one wall with donated coats stacked on top. A narrow hallway led to rooms that had once been classrooms. Agnes gave Mina a towel, dry socks, and the kind of stare that made lying feel childish.

“Sit,” Agnes said. “Pregnant women who have been chased through Boston do not stand around politely.”

Mina froze.

Agnes pointed toward her stomach.

“I raised three sons and buried two husbands. Don’t insult me.”

Lev stepped into the hallway to make calls.

Mina sat.

The phone, still connected, was warm against her palm.

Alfred’s voice came through quieter now.

“I’m coming there.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

“Alfred, if someone is tracking me because of you—”

“Then I should have protected you before you felt you had to become another woman.”

The admission stunned her into silence.

Agnes set tea in front of her.

Mina stared at the steam.

For two years, she had waited for Alfred to say something simple enough to hold. Not a gift. Not a black card. Not a driver at midnight. Words. Human words.

Now he offered them while men hunted her and her false name sat in a stranger’s text message.

Timing, she thought bitterly, remained Alfred Costello’s worst quality.

“Did you authorize the clinic payments?” she asked.

“No.”

“Did Carlo?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“Did your mother?”

A pause.

That pause told her more than he intended.

Mina closed her eyes.

Lucia Costello had never raised her voice to Mina. She didn’t need to. She spoke with the soft control of a woman who had spent forty years teaching rooms to rearrange themselves around her comfort.

Three months earlier, at a charity luncheon, Lucia had looked at Mina’s hand resting near Alfred’s on a table and said, almost fondly, “Women who love men like my son must learn not to confuse tenderness with authority.”

Mina had never forgotten it.

The front door opened.

Lev reentered first.

Alfred followed.

Rain darkened his black suit. His hair was wet at the temples. In all the years Mina had known him, she had seen Alfred angry, amused, exhausted, and once, after a shooting at the docks, covered in another man’s blood.

She had never seen him afraid.

Now fear stood in front of her wearing his face.

His eyes went to her stomach first.

Then her face.

He stopped ten feet away.

A careful distance.

That distance hurt and helped.

“I won’t come closer unless you say I can,” he said.

Agnes folded her arms.

“At last. A man with a hint of sense. Mark the calendar.”

Mina almost smiled.

Almost.