He left his supplies leaning against the wall and opened the door. “Nat? You here?”
Silence. He stepped into the hallway. At first, everything looked right—the credenza, the bowl in which he always dropped his keys and change, the mirror above it. Then, at the end of the hall, he saw a pile of fluffy clouds. The stuffing from his couch. Wishing he had a weapon at hand, Carlo walked slowly down the short hall and into the main space of his loft.
Whoever had partied at the office had had their after-prom here. The destruction was as complete, if not even more vigorous, here, in his home. Where his child lived. No longer worried about whether there was someone still there, he ran to the other rooms—his office, trashed. His bedroom, trashed. Trey’s room. Demolished. No other word for it. His toys had been destroyed, the contents of his dresser and closet torn to pieces. His mattress had been slashed open, long cuts like wounds striping the surface, showing the guts of foam and cotton matting.
The words DEAD KID were sprayed in dripping red paint across the solar system Carlo had painted on the wall behind his bed.
And then Carlo understood.
He called Luca and made sure his son was safe. Then he called Peter. When he answered, Carlo asked, without preamble, “Pete, were you home last night? Have you been home?”
“Yeah. Quiet night. Came from there to work. What?”
“Your house is okay?”
“Yeah. Carlo, what? You okay?”
He hung up and dialed Luca to make sure that Trey was still with him and that he would keep him. No one would fuck with Luca. Carlo didn’t give details for his worry, and Luca didn’t push. He would push later, Carlo knew, when they were face to face, but then he would be glad to explain.
Next he called Carmen, hoping to ask her to check on Bina, but got her voice mail. He left a message to the same effect, asking her to call.
And then he called his Uncle Ben. It was not acceptable to check in on the progress of a deal, but this was information they needed.
Because Carlo was sure that James Auberon was behind all this. And that meant he knew. He knew, and had reacted this way. And that meant that Bina was in much more danger than he’d even known.
~ 10 ~
Sabina had been born in Buenos Aires into a comfortable, middle-class existence. Her father had been a business executive of some sort; what he had done while he was gone every day had always been something of a mystery to her young mind, but he’d dressed in nice suits and carried a briefcase, wherever he’d gone. Her mother had taught piano lessons in their home. She’d had a brother, Eduardo, who’d been four years younger than she.
Her memories of that life were faded, sanded away by time and distance, but she remembered it as a comfortable, happy, unremarkable life. They’d had a pet cat. She’d had a hamster. They’d taken holidays. Her parents had held and attended dinner parties, and Sabina had had sleepovers with friends. Her little brother had been a pest.
When she was eight years old, her parents had allowed her to spend a week during a school holiday with a friend in the country, at her friend’s grandparents’ ranch. She’d been there, learning to ride horses and playing gaucho, when her parents and brother died in a car crash.
The months immediately subsequent to that day were almost entirely a void in Sabina’s memory, but she’d ended up living in Providence, with her paternal aunt, Tia Valeria. They hadn’t known each other well at all—Sabina’s father had married later in life, and his sister was older than he. She had moved to the United States and become a citizen long before Sabina had even been born. But she’d been Sabina’s only living relative.
Living in the States had been terrifying at first. Sabina hadn’t spoken much English, and the pace of life here was much different than she’d known. But her aunt had been a warm, loving woman. She’d adopted Sabina, making her a citizen and giving her stability, and they’d made a life together, the two of them. The second phase of Sabina’s life had been happy and comfortable, too.
Her aunt had not been remotely social, though, and their life had been small, just the two of them. When Valeria fell ill, Sabina’s life had shrunk more, as she turned from her few high school friends and took care of the woman who’d taken care of her.
Valeria died a month after Sabina’s high school graduation, and Sabina had found herself truly alone in a world she had not yet completely understood.
But she’d made her way. Her aunt’s tiny house had been paid for and left to her. She’d secured a job at the men’s accessories counter at an upscale department store in Providence, and she’d done a little modeling—until a supposed job modeling swimwear became another kind of job entirely, and Sabina had fled that job and then the idea of modeling altogether. She’d taken community college classes in the evenings, and she’d worked during the day. She’d kept to herself and stayed focused on building a life on her own.