Chapter 1 - Five Minutes
“Can you hold me for five minutes?”
Dante Moretti had heard men beg for money, forgiveness, protection, and occasionally their lives.
But no one had ever stood in the doorway of his private study, wearing pink socks and a crooked school ribbon, and asked him for something he had no idea how to give.
Especially not a seven-year-old girl.
Rain pressed against the tall windows of the Moretti estate, turning the late afternoon into a gray blur of bare trees and black iron fencing. The mansion smelled faintly of wet stone, lemon polish, and the wood smoke drifting from a fireplace no one had bothered to tend properly.
Dante stared at the child.
She stared back.
“Five minutes,” she repeated, softer this time. “It doesn’t have to be longer.”
Something in her voice made the room feel smaller.
Dante slowly put down the glass of scotch he had not touched.
“What did you say?”
The little girl swallowed.
“Can you hold me?”
Dante Moretti was forty-one years old and feared by people who did not frighten easily.
Men lowered their voices when they said his name. Judges who had never met him knew which restaurants his associates favored. Business owners along the waterfront understood that certain contracts arrived with consequences no attorney would ever put in writing.
Inside his own house, the staff had learned his habits with the precision of soldiers.
Never interrupt him during a closed-door meeting.
Never enter the east wing after nine at night unless summoned.
Never move anything on his desk.
Never bring strangers through the north entrance.
And above all, never allow children into his study.
The last rule existed mostly because there were no children in Dante Moretti’s life.
There hadn’t been for a very long time.
Yet Elena Voss stood three steps inside the forbidden room as if she had wandered into a library instead of the private office of a man half the city considered untouchable.
Dante leaned back in his chair.
“Where is your mother?”
Elena twisted her fingers together.
“In a meeting.”
“With whom?”
“I don’t know.”
“You’re supposed to be with her.”
“I know.”
“Then why aren’t you?”
She looked down.
The question seemed to require more courage than entering the room had.
“I had a bad day.”
Dante’s expression did not change, but something in his shoulders did.
He had spent most of his adult life listening for lies. Lies had rhythms. People added details when they were afraid they would not be believed. They avoided eye contact at the wrong moment. They rushed explanations or rehearsed them too carefully.
Elena did none of those things.
She simply stood there looking miserable.
“You had a bad day,” he repeated.
She nodded.
“And your solution was to come into a room you’ve been told not to enter?”
Another nod.
“That doesn’t sound like a very good solution.”
“No.”
He almost dismissed her then.
Almost.
His phone had been vibrating against the desk for the past twenty minutes. Marco Bellini had called twice. Another message from the docks waited unread. Somewhere across the city, men Dante did not trust were becoming impatient because he had refused an arrangement three weeks earlier.
He had problems that required solutions.
A lonely child was not one of them.
“You should go back downstairs.”
Elena did not move.
Dante’s eyes narrowed slightly.
Most grown men recognized that expression and reconsidered whatever they had been about to do.
Elena took another step forward.
That was when she asked him.
“Can you hold me for five minutes?”
Now the question hung between them.
Dante looked toward the open doorway as if expecting someone to appear and explain that this was some elaborate misunderstanding.
No one did.
“Does your mother know you ask men you barely know to hold you?”
The words came out harder than he intended.
Elena flinched.
Not from fear.
From embarrassment.
Dante regretted the tone immediately, which annoyed him more than the request itself.
“You’re not a stranger,” she whispered.
“I’m not?”
“You live here.”
“That is not how strangers work.”
“Mama says you’re not really scary.”
Dante went still.
For several seconds, the only sound was rain ticking against the glass.
“What exactly does your mother say about me?”
Elena seemed to realize she might have revealed something she shouldn't have.
“Nothing bad.”
“That wasn't my question.”
“She says people don't always know the whole story.”
Dante studied her.
“And your mother knows my whole story?”
“No.”
A pause.
“But she says sad people sometimes build walls because walls don't leave.”
The words struck him with such precision that his face hardened.
Elena immediately looked worried.
“Was that bad?”
“No.”
Dante rose.
The girl instinctively stepped backward.
He came around the desk, the black fabric of his suit absorbing the amber fireplace glow. Up close, the difference between them was almost absurd. Dante was tall and powerfully built. Elena barely reached his waist.
He stopped several feet away.
“You asked for five minutes.”
She nodded.
Dante had negotiated contracts worth millions without hesitation.
Now he had no idea what to do with his hands.
Finally, he lowered himself until they were nearly eye level.
Elena waited.
Dante slowly opened one arm.
That was all the invitation she needed.
She crossed the distance and wrapped both arms around his neck.
Dante froze.
Her cheek pressed against his shoulder.
One of her pink socks slid slightly on the polished floor as he caught her instinctively and lifted her.
She weighed almost nothing.
That frightened him.
Not because she was fragile.
Because something about the trust in the gesture reached a place inside him he had spent years sealing shut.
His hand hovered uncertainly over her back before settling there.
Elena sighed.
Not dramatically.
Just one long, exhausted breath.
Dante felt her entire little body relax.
He stared at the rain.
Five minutes.
He could survive five minutes.
He had survived worse things.
But thirty seconds later, he realized Elena was quietly crying.
No sobbing.
No shaking.
Just tears dampening the shoulder of his black shirt.
Dante's jaw tightened.
“Who hurt you?”
Elena immediately pulled back.
“Nobody.”
“That answer usually means somebody.”
She wiped her cheek.
“Kids at school.”
His expression sharpened.
“What did they do?”
“They said Mama's a servant.”
Dante waited.
Elena looked embarrassed.
“And they said I don't have a real family.”
Something cold moved through him.
“That was your bad day?”
She nodded.
“They asked who my dad was.”
“And?”
“I don't have one.”
Dante didn't answer.
She hurried to explain.
“Mama says that's okay. She says families can be small.”
“She is correct.”
“But everybody else has someone come to Father Day.”
Dante looked away.
Suddenly he understood why she had asked to be held.
Not because she was afraid of him.
Because she had spent an entire day watching other children describe the one thing she didn't have.
A father.
His gaze dropped to the child in his arms.
“Why me?”
Elena's answer came without hesitation.
“Because you look lonely too.”
Dante stopped breathing for half a second.
Nobody spoke to him like that.
Nobody dared.
Yet the child merely rested her head against his chest again.
“You're very observant,” he murmured.
“Mama says that gets me in trouble.”
“I imagine it does.”
For the first time, Elena gave the faintest smile.
Dante almost smiled back.
Then footsteps sounded in the hallway.
Fast footsteps.
A woman appeared in the doorway and stopped dead.
“Elena!”
The child lifted her head.
“Mama.”
Sofia Voss looked as though every nightmare she'd ever had had just arrived simultaneously.
She wore the simple black uniform of the Moretti household staff. Her dark blond hair had escaped its neat knot, and one hand still held a folder from whatever meeting she had left.
Her eyes moved from Elena to Dante.
Then to Dante's arms around her daughter.
“I am so sorry, Mr. Moretti.”
Dante looked at Elena.
“How much time?”
Elena glanced toward the clock.
“Three minutes.”
“You asked for five.”
Sofia stared.
Dante carried Elena to the leather sofa beside the fireplace and sat with her.
“We have two minutes remaining.”
Elena smiled properly this time.
Sofia looked completely lost.
Dante nodded toward a chair.
“Sit.”
She obeyed.
Two minutes passed.
Then three.
Dante made no attempt to move Elena.
Eventually she whispered, “Thank you.”
“You're welcome.”
She climbed down.
Sofia reached for her hand.
They were almost at the door when Dante spoke.
“Sofia.”
She turned.
“Yes, sir?”
“Tomorrow morning. Eight o'clock. My office.”
Fear flashed across her face.
Dante noticed.
“This is not about Elena entering the study.”
Relief followed, but only slightly.
“Then what is it about?”
Dante looked toward the rain-covered windows.
“The meeting you were in when your daughter came looking for you.”
Sofia became very still.
“What about it?”
“Who was it with?”
Her fingers tightened around Elena's hand.
“Mr. Bellini.”
Dante's gaze snapped back to her.
Marco Bellini.
The same man who had called him twice that afternoon.
“What did Marco want?”
Sofia hesitated.
And Dante knew immediately she was hiding something.
“Eight o'clock,” he repeated.
Sofia nodded and left with Elena.
The hallway became silent.
Dante returned to his desk.
His phone vibrated again.
Marco.
He ignored it.
Then he noticed something on the floor near the doorway.
A folded piece of paper.
Probably dropped from Sofia's folder.
Dante picked it up.
There were only three lines.
A bank account number.
A date.
And beneath them, typed in capital letters:
VOSS KNOWS ABOUT THE NORTH DOCKS. REMOVE HER BEFORE FRIDAY.
Dante's expression emptied.
Upstairs, Elena Voss had just asked him to hold her because she'd had a bad day.
Someone else was planning to make sure her mother never came home.
May you like
And Friday was tomorrow.
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