Chapter 4 - THE ABSENT FATHER AND THE POLICE
As Emily carefully fed tiny drops of warm milk and softened bread to her infant brother, the color began to return to her pale cheeks. She ate small bites of the chicken herself, moving with polite, cautious restraint despite the clear, ravenous hunger gnawing at her stomach.
Dominic leaned forward again, resting his forearms on the table.
"Where are your parents, Emily?" he asked, his tone measured, devoid of judgment.
Emily stopped chewing. She looked up from her bowl, her eyes filled with an old, heavy caution that no eleven-year-old child should ever possess.
"Mom is sick," Emily murmured, her voice dropping so low Dominic had to lean closer to catch the words. "She's in bed. She can't get up."
"What kind of sick?"
"She coughs a lot," Emily said, staring down at her brother's blanket. "And her face is very hot. She hasn't been able to go to work for three weeks."
Dominic’s jaw tightened subtly. "And your father?"
At the mention of the word father, Emily’s small hands instantly clamped around Noah’s blanket, pulling the infant even tighter against her chest as if protecting him from a physical blow.
"He left," she said flatly. "A long time ago."
Dominic didn't ask further details about the father. He had seen this story play out a thousand times in the working-class tenements of South Chicago. He slowly turned his head to his left, offering a subtle, fractional nod to Marco—his head of security, a broad-shouldered man in his late forties standing near the window.
Marco immediately understood the silent command. He reached into his suit jacket, pulled out an encrypted smartphone, and stepped three paces away toward the glass overlooking Michigan Avenue, quickly keying in a query to trace the child's residence through local utility databases and precinct reports.
Emily caught the movement. Her eyes darted from Marco's phone back to Dominic, her face suddenly turning ghostly pale with absolute panic.
"No police!" Emily begged, her voice rising in a sharp, desperate squeak as she made a movement as if to jump out of the booth. "Please! Sir, don't call the police!"
Dominic held up his hand, stopping her before she could slide off the chair.
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"Why not?" Dominic asked gently.
"Mom said... Mom said if the city finds out she's sick and we don't have rent money, they'll take Noah away," Emily wept softly, her body shivering. "They'll put him in a home. She told me to never, ever talk to the police."
