Chapter 6 - The Child in the Library and the First Truth Dante Could Not Buy
Dante ran toward the staircase.
I followed with Mara.
A guard stopped us at the landing.
“The sprinklers are working,” he said.
“Firefighters are on their way.”
Bianca was screaming her son's name.
The boy was seven.
His name was Theo.
We could hear him coughing.
Dante took a fire extinguisher.
The guard forced the damaged door.
They brought Theo out beneath a wet blanket.
I watched Bianca hold him.
Her face crumpled against his hair.
I thought of my mother.
How often she had chosen danger to protect me.
At the hospital, investigators found an accelerant.
This was no accident.
The camera outside the library had been unplugged.
A service worker had been paid to leave early.
Victor called the fire a tragic coincidence.
I watched his hands as he spoke.
They never stopped moving.
Dante wanted his men to question Victor.
“Not your men,” I said.
He stared at me.
“The police.”
“Victor knows how to buy police.”
“Then we find someone he cannot buy.”
Mara contacted a federal investigator.
Her name was Agent Reyes.
She took my statement without interrupting.
For the first time, someone wrote down every word.
That evening Dante apologized.
Not for Sterling alone.
For making me afraid of him.
“I thought protection meant control,” he said.
“It doesn't,” I answered.
May you like
He nodded.
And for once, he listened.
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