"Since 8:42 a.m. this morning."
He looks at me for a long second. He does not ask why I came two days early. He does not ask what made me decide. He reads it on my face and chooses not to make me say it out loud.
That is mercy. I do not deserve it. I take it anyway.
"What do you want me to do?"
"Bring him in. Alive. We do this on our terms, not his. I want him in this office, in this building, on this side of every line my brother has been on alone for thirty-eight years."
"He is NYPD."
"I do not care that he is NYPD."
"He has a complaint with Internal Affairs as of this morning, routed through Moretti Legal."
He looks at me.
"Good. That is the kind of work I pay you for, Nadia. Bring him in by Tuesday."
"Yes, sir."
"And the Stavros file."
"Monday at 8 a.m."
"Tomorrow at 8 a.m."
I have just lost a day.
Of course, he read me.
I have been his consigliera for ten years. I know every tell he has. He knows every tell I have. We have been reading each other across this desk for a decade, and I walked in here thinking I could outmaneuver him with a document.
He turned the document into a leash.
He turns it face down on his desk. He is going to look at it for the rest of his life, but not for another second in this office with me in it.
"You can go."
I go.
The hallway is empty. The elevator is empty. The parking level is empty.
I get in my car. I do not start the engine.
I came in to buy two weeks. I bought it one day.
I traded Sean's freedom for one day on the Stavros file.
I traded the man who told me he chose me. Who put his hand on my throat and let me say I am yours in the morning light. Who folded a family tree back the way he found it and swept the floor of my closet because he wanted me to be able to keep pretending he had not seen it.
I traded him to the only people in this city who can keep him alive.
That is the sentence I am going to say to myself every time the consigliera’s face slips and the woman who said, "I am yours," tries to get back into the car.
The Morettis can keep him alive. I cannot.
I have lost one person to a Greek already. I am not losing another.
