Chapter 2 - The Worth of Four Boys
Vincent did not repeat himself. He stood with an easy, terrifying stillness, waiting. To a man who managed a multi-million-dollar criminal enterprise and commanded a small private army across the five boroughs, every asset, every liability, and every living soul within his orbit had to have a function. Chaos was born from useless things. Useless people got other people killed.
Emily looked down at her boys. She saw them not as the world saw them—as an overwhelming financial burden, a liability, an anchor dragging an impoverished widow down into the gray slush of the city—but as the pieces of her soul she had painstakingly kept alive through three years of hell. If this man wanted an inventory of their utility to justify giving them a roof over their heads, she would give it to him without flinching.
"Ethan," she began, her voice gaining strength, her fingers resting lightly on her eldest son’s rigid shoulder. "He’s fourteen. He knows cars. He spent two summers working the salvage yard on Atlantic Avenue with his uncle. He can strip an engine, change an alternator, and he knows how to patch a radiator with nothing but epoxy and wire. He doesn't complain about the cold, and he doesn't break tools."
Vincent’s gaze shifted to Ethan. The boy didn't drop his chin. Ethan’s dark eyes were burning with an adolescent hostility that Vincent recognized immediately—the look of an older brother who had been forced to act as the man of the house long before his bones had finished growing. Vincent noted the calluses on the boy's knuckles, the faint, faded scar across his left thumb from a slipped wrench, and the defensive, low center of gravity. A boy who expected a fight, and who had learned to absorb the first punch.
Emily moved her hand to Mason’s backpack strap.
"Mason fixes electronics," she continued, her words clipped and precise. "He’s eleven. Give him a broken motherboard, an old television, or a damaged radio, and he’ll salvage the chips and make it work. He built his own frequency receiver out of an abandoned police scanner he found in a dumpster. He stays quiet. He doesn't touch what isn't his, and he cleans up his solder."
Mason pushed his wire-rimmed glasses up his nose, his eyes remaining fixed on the encrypted radio antenna mounted on the roof of the center SUV. He knew the model. He knew the frequency band it ran on just by the length of the whip antenna. He didn't say a word, but his fingers twitched against the straps of his pack, his mind already cataloging the hardware inside the vehicle. Vincent’s eyes lingered on the boy’s hands, noticing the steady, rhythmic calm in them.
"Noah," Emily said, her tone softening marginally as the eight-year-old stepped slightly ahead, his mouth twitching as if holding back a torrent of words. "Noah's good with numbers. Better than adults. He can balance a ledger, count inventory, and tell you the exact change on a four-hundred-dollar receipt before the cash register finishes printing. He keeps our books. He knows what a gallon of milk costs in four different neighborhoods, and he notices when a single dollar goes missing."
Noah puffed his chest out slightly, nodding with solemn importance. "There are forty-two bolts holding the steel beams on the ceiling of this section," Noah whispered, unable to help himself. "And twenty-four lug nuts on that big truck. Six per wheel."
Vincent’s dark eyebrows twitched downward by a millimeter, the only outward sign of his surprise. His men rarely noticed the details this eight-year-old had absorbed in ninety seconds of waiting.
Then, Vincent’s eyes traveled down to the base of Emily’s coat, where the five-year-old was still tethered, his cheek resting against the rough wool, his left foot clad only in a damp, graying tube sock.
Vincent looked at the small boy. The child’s eyelids were fluttering, heavy with the deadening exhaustion that only hits small children after midnight. The contrast between this immaculate, deadly mob boss and the disheveled toddler was jarring.
"And him?" Vincent asked, his tone dropping an octave, devoid of the sharpness he had used earlier.
Caleb seemed to sense the immense presence looming over him. He peeled his face away from his mother’s coat, slowly opening one heavy, almond-shaped brown eye. He looked up—way up—past the tailored charcoal trousers, past the broad expanse of the dark silk shirt, all the way to the sharp, scarred jawline of the man looking down at him.
Caleb pulled his thumb from his mouth with a tiny, wet pop.
He looked down at his own feet. He lifted his left leg, pointing a small, sticky index finger at the damp sock touching the concrete floor.
"My shoe disappeared," Caleb said, his voice small, raspy, and entirely matter-of-fact. "The blue one with the dinosaur. It fell between the train and the platform."
A dead silence fell over the garage.
Behind Vincent, Frank cleared his throat softly, clearly expecting the boss to dismiss this absurdity. A billionaire mob kingpin did not conduct interviews regarding five-year-olds with missing sneakers in the subterranean vaults of Manhattan.
Vincent stared at Caleb’s sock. He saw the small, cold toes curling against the frigid chill of the garage floor.
Then, something shifted in Vincent Moretti’s face. It was nothing so vulgar as a broad smile—men in his line of work did not smile without a purpose—but the terrifying, predatory coldness in his eyes thawed by a fraction of a percent. The line of his mouth curved up at the corner, an almost imperceptible twitch of dry amusement.
"A dinosaur," Vincent said, his voice deep and resonant.
May you like
"A T-Rex," Caleb clarified solemnly, before shoving his thumb back into his mouth and leaning his forehead back against Emily’s hip, satisfied that the critical operational update had been delivered.
***
