Rule One: Don’t Fall for the Don Chapter 13

Rule One: Don’t Fall for the Don Chapter 13: Two Hundred and Thirty Miles

“He’s at Methodist,” Nico said. “Last night. Somebody was waiting in the alley when he locked up.”

The floor tilted.

“He’s alive.” Nico said it fast. “He’s awake, he’s talking – one through the shoulder, cracked collarbone, they’re watching him for a bleed because he went down hard on the concrete. He’s okay, Nora. I swear on my grandmother.”

“Who-”

“Two of Carmine’s guys. Vega had them by six this morning. It’s done.”

“Why didn’t he call me?”

Silence.

“Nico. Why has he not called me in five days?”

Nico exhaled. “Because the Ferraros refiled. Serafina’s lawyer is arguing instability – the assault, the shooting, a girlfriend in another state. Rafe sat in that restaurant for six hours after he read it and then he decided-” He

stopped.

“Decided what.”

“He decided he wasn’t going to be the reason you came back. He said – and I’m quoting – ‘She’s putting people in federal prison at twenty-seven. I’ve got a custody fight and a neighborhood that keeps trying to kill me. She deserves to leave without a reason to feel guilty.”

I closed my eyes.

“He was going to end it,” Nico said quietly. “To let you off the hook. He’s been sitting on it five days because he can’t make himself say it.”

“The woman in the photo?”

“The health inspector. She was asking about the grease trap.” Nico made a wet sound that was half a laugh. “He didn’t even notice her, Nora. He never notices anyone.”

I was already out of bed. Already pulling a bag off the closet floor.

“Nora?”

“There’s a 6:05 out of Union Station,” I said.

Here’s what I thought about for two hundred and thirty miles.

You fold yourself up so you won’t be anybody’s problem.

He’d said that to me in a kitchen at two in the morning, and I’d cried, and I never once noticed he was describing himself.

That’s what he’d done his whole life. Made himself small. Silent. Useful. The boy who sent money home. The man who came back from a war for a funeral and stayed for twelve years. The man who handed a stranger his bedroom in four minutes, who slept on a hallway floor, who bought a necklace and ran away, who took the charge and the lawsuit and the bullet and never once said look what I did for you.

He had never in his life asked a single person to stay.

So he was going to disappear quietly instead. For my sake. Like a gift I

hadn’t agreed to accept.

Not this time.

I got there at 2:40 in the afternoon.

Room 612. Sling, hospital gown, four days of stubble, staring at the ceiling.

Matteo was asleep in the chair beside him with the brass knight in his fist.

Rafe turned his head and saw me in the doorway and his whole face came

apart.

“You’re in Washington,” he said.

“I’m in Brooklyn.”

“Nora-”

“Don’t.” I crossed the room. “You were going to end it.”

He didn’t lie. He never lies. “Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because I’ve got a hole in my shoulder, a court date, and a kid who needs me not to leave this borough.” His voice was sandpaper. “And you’ve got the thing you wanted since you were nine years old. I’m not going to be the weight on your ankle. I’d rather you hate me a little now than resent me in five years.”

“Okay,” I said. “My turn.”

I put my bag down.

“I called Dana Reyes from the train. Hartline runs a second-year placement out of the Eastern District – right here, Brooklyn, Cadman Plaza. Same

program. Same certification. Nine stops from Van Brunt Street. Fellows transfer every year.” I took a breath. “I signed the request this morning on my phone in the Baltimore tunnel. And she said, direct quote, ‘Quinn, if you’d asked me in January I’d have said yes in January.”

He stared at me.

“There’s a wall,” I said. “I don’t touch anything with your name on it, ever, and I told her that before she asked. I’m not giving anything up. I’m not shrinking. I am not going to be small for you, Rafe Bellandi, because I am extremely good at math, and it turns out I can have the entire thing.” My voice finally broke. “I just can’t have it without you in it. So stop deciding things about my life alone in a dark restaurant, and ask me to stay.”

He was crying. Big, silent, wrecked.

“Stay,” he said.

“Louder.”

“Stay. Nora. Please stay.”

And a small voice from the chair beside the bed – rusty and cracked and

fourteen months out of use – said:

“Stay.”

Rafe’s head turned so fast the monitor jumped.

Matteo was sitting up with the knight against his chest, looking straight at

“Stay,” he said again.

I climbed onto the edge of that hospital bed, careful of the sling, and pulled his son up with me, and the three of us stayed exactly like that while a nurse in the doorway quietly decided to come back later.