Chapter 13 - Home Without GhostsDominic’s “building near the hospital” was a twelve-story limestone residence with a doorman who looked like he had once wrestled bears for money.
Sophie stood in the lobby with Leo beside her, Mila behind them, Dr. Grant explaining transition guidelines, and Dominic speaking quietly with Gabriel near the elevators.
The apartment was on the eighth floor.
Not too high, Dr. Grant said, because traumatized children did not always like feeling trapped in the sky. Not too low, Dominic said, because security. Sophie suspected those two had already fought and compromised before she arrived.
The door opened into warmth.
That was the first thing Sophie noticed.
Heat.
Her own apartment always had a winter draft near the window. This place wrapped around them gently, with soft lamps, pale walls, and furniture too expensive but not sharp-edged. Someone had placed children’s books on low shelves, plain pajamas in drawers, cereal in the kitchen, and a small nightlight shaped like a moon on the bedside table.
Sophie saw it and went still.
Dominic, behind her, noticed.
“I can have it removed.”
Leo saw it too.
He walked toward the bedroom slowly.
“It’s like mine,” he said.
Sophie held her breath.
“Do you want it to stay?” Dr. Grant asked.
Leo touched the moon light.
“Yes.”
Sophie looked at Dominic.
He gave the smallest nod, as if relieved he had not ruined something.
The first night was not beautiful.
Leo refused dinner because the noodles were “wrong.” He cried when Mila left the room to shower. He asked four times when he could go back to his old bed. At nine, he threw the moon light across the room because Sophie hummed without realizing it, and the tune reached something in him before he was ready.
The lamp broke against the wall.
Everyone froze.
Leo stared at the pieces in horror.
Then at Sophie.
His face crumpled as if he expected punishment.
Sophie’s heart broke again in a new place.
She lowered herself to the floor.
“It’s okay.”
“I broke it.”
“I see that.”
“I’m bad.”
“No.”
His chin trembled.
“I broke it.”
“Things can break without you being bad.”
Leo looked confused, which told her everything about Belladonna House.
Mila began to cry silently in the doorway.
Dr. Grant watched with wet eyes.
Sophie picked up a safe plastic piece of the broken lamp and set it on the table.
“We’ll clean it up. Tomorrow we can decide if you want another one or no moon lights.”
Leo whispered, “Nonna would make me stand.”
“For how long?”
He shrugged.
“Until I was sorry enough.”
Sophie closed her eyes for half a second.
When she opened them, Dominic stood near the doorway.
She had not heard him enter.
His face was murderously calm.
“Dominic,” she said quietly.
He looked at her.
She shook her head once.
Not now.
Not in front of Leo.
He understood.
That was new too.
Dominic crouched in the hallway, far enough away not to crowd the child.
“In my house,” he said slowly, “when I broke something as a boy, my father made me bleed for it.”
Leo stared at him.
Sophie did too.
Dominic’s voice remained even.
“That did not teach me respect. It taught me fear. Fear is not the same thing.”
Leo wiped his nose with his sleeve.
“Did you break a lamp?”
“A vase.”
“Was it expensive?”
“Very.”
“What happened?”
Dominic’s eyes darkened.
“I learned to stop throwing things where people could see.”
Sophie felt that sentence travel through the room.
Leo considered him.
“Did you get better?”
Dominic looked at Sophie.
“I’m trying.”
Leo lowered his eyes.
“I don’t want another moon.”
“That’s okay,” Sophie said.
Later, after Leo fell asleep with Mila on a mattress beside his bed because Dr. Grant said attachment could not be rebuilt by subtraction, Sophie found Dominic in the kitchen.
He had removed his suit jacket and rolled up his sleeves. The bandage on his arm showed a faint line of red.
“You’re bleeding again,” she said.
He looked down, annoyed.
“So I am.”
“Sit.”
“I don’t take orders in kitchens.”
“You do in mine.”
He sat.
She found a first-aid kit in a drawer because of course this apartment had everything. She changed the bandage with more force than necessary.
“You didn’t have to say that to Leo,” she said.
“Yes, I did.”
“Why?”
Dominic watched her hands.
“Because men like me are not born in restaurants. We are built in houses where children learn power before kindness.”
Sophie’s fingers slowed.
“And you think Leo needed to know that?”
“I think he needed to know broken things do not make him uniquely bad.”
She taped the bandage down.
“Thank you.”
He nodded once.
An awkward silence stretched.
Then he said, “Matteo’s surgery consult is tomorrow.”
Sophie looked up.
“What did Ellison say?”
“That he needs another repair soon. Days, maybe a week.”
Fear entered the room quietly.
“Will he survive?”
Dominic’s mouth tightened.
“She would not promise.”
“Good doctors don’t.”
“I hate good doctors.”
“No,” Sophie said. “You hate honest ones.”
He accepted that.
“Will you come?”
She hesitated.
Leo was in the next room. Her son. Alive. Fragile. Angry. Hers but not hers yet.
Matteo was a baby with a scar that had opened the grave.
Dominic watched her struggle.
“You can say no.”
That surprised her.
“I can?”
“I’m practicing.”
A tired smile touched her mouth.
“I’ll come for the consult. But Leo comes first.”
“He should.”
Outside, sirens wailed somewhere distant.
Inside, the apartment felt like a borrowed shelter built over a fault line.
The next morning, Leo refused to speak to Sophie until she remembered not to call him sweetheart. Serafina had used sweetheart when threatening him.
So Sophie asked what words were safe.
He said, “Luca.”
She said, “Okay, Luca.”
It hurt less the second time.
At Mercy, Matteo’s crib had been moved to a private surgical preparation room. He looked impossibly small beneath the hospital blanket. Dominic stood beside him, one large hand resting near the baby’s foot, not touching until Matteo stirred and kicked weakly.
Then Dominic let the tiny foot press against his finger.
Sophie entered with Leo at her side.
Leo stopped at the doorway.
“That baby has tubes.”
“Yes,” Sophie said.
“I had tubes?”
“Yes.”
“Did you stay with me?”
The question came quietly.
Sophie knelt.
“Every minute they let me.”
He studied her face.
“Did you leave for coffee?”
Her breath caught.
Only Carla had mentioned that transport happened when Sophie went downstairs.
“Once,” Sophie whispered. “I came back as fast as I could.”
Leo looked at Matteo.
“Maybe don’t leave him.”
Dominic heard.
His face changed.
Sophie stood slowly.
“I won’t.”
Dr. Ellison arrived with scans, diagrams, and the kind of careful explanation that made terror feel organized. Matteo needed surgery to correct what Marlowe had left unfinished. Waiting increased risk. Operating carried risk. There were no clean choices, only necessary ones.
Dominic listened without interrupting.
Then he asked, “If this were your child?”
Dr. Ellison looked at Matteo.
“I would operate.”
Dominic nodded.
“Then save him.”
Sophie stayed until they wheeled Matteo away.
Dominic walked beside the crib to the double doors. When he had to stop, his hand remained in the air for half a second after the baby disappeared.
Sophie stood beside him.
Leo, surprisingly, slipped his small hand into hers.
She froze but did not squeeze too tightly.
Dominic saw.
For all his power, he looked almost envious of that tiny miracle.
Then Leo reached his other hand toward Dominic.
Dominic stared.
Sophie whispered, “Slowly.”
May you like
He took it as if accepting something holy.
The three of them stood in the surgical hallway, connected by a child who remembered nothing, a baby fighting everything, and a truth too large for any of them to carry alone.
