Chapter 3 - The Salt in the Tea
The house was cold in the way that big houses always were when only one man lived in them.
Dr. Aris Thorne was seventy years old, with small, sharp hands that smelled of carbolic soap and tobacco. He had been fixing the Moretti family’s bullet wounds and broken bones since the late eighties, and he didn't ask questions about why a woman with a split lip and a child were sitting in the second-floor library at two in the morning.
He set his leather bag on the mahogany table, cleaned Laurel’s lip with a piece of cotton soaked in iodine, and checked the little boy’s chest with a small, cold stethoscope.
Leo didn't wake up completely. He only stirred, his eyelids fluttering, his mouth making small, wet noises against Laurel’s shoulder.
"The girl’s got two cracked ribs," Dr. Thorne said, turning to Damian, who was standing by the cold fireplace with a glass of un-iced rye in his hand. "Nothing broken clean, but she’s going to be useless for ten days. The boy’s undernourished. Not starving, but he’s short on iron and vitamin D. Standard budget diet."
"Fix it," Damian said.
"I can give her pills," Thorne said dryly, packing his instruments back into his doctor's bag. "I can’t give her four square meals a day and eight hours of sleep. That’s your department, Damian."
"Thank you, Doctor," Laurel said, her voice small from the side of the sofa.
Thorne looked at her for a long second, his old eyes moving from her face to the toddler, then to Damian. He didn't say what he was thinking. In this house, thinking out loud was how people ended up moving back to Indiana.
"Keep her off her feet," Thorne said to Damian as he picked up his hat. "And don't let her carry the boy for a week. She’s going to be in pain every time she takes a deep breath."
When the doctor left, the room returned to that suffocating silence that seemed to follow Damian everywhere he went.
Laurel lay back against the dark green velvet of the sofa. Her face was pale, the blue welt near her eye darker now, contrast against her skin like an ink stain.
"Where are we?" she asked.
"Gold Coast," Damian said. "Dearborn Street."
"Is this where you live?"
"It’s where I sleep."
She looked around at the tall walls covered in dark wood paneling, the brass lamps with their green shades, the rows of heavy, unread books that looked like they had come with the house when he bought it from some bankrupt probate attorney.
"It looks like a museum for someone who died thirty years ago," she said.
"It’s quiet," Damian said. He walked over to the table and set his glass down. He looked at the child, who was lying sideways now, his small red boots dangling over the edge of the velvet cushion. "Why didn't you write to me?"
"Where?" she asked, her voice turning sharp again. "To 'Daniel Vane, care of the Chicago River'? You didn't leave a number, Daniel. You left an empty apartment and six thousand dollars in an envelope with no return address."
"I sent a man to Detroit six months after I left," Damian said. "He told me the apartment was empty and the landlord said you’d gone south."
"I went to Toledo," she said. "My sister had a room. Then she got married to a guy who didn't want another man's kid in his house, so I came here."
"Why Chicago?"
"Because Chicago has jobs," she said, looking down at her hands, which were rough and dry, the red polish on her nails chipped down to the quick. "And because I thought if I was in a big city, nobody would notice us. I didn't know every second nightclub on West Randolph was owned by the guy who used to fix my kitchen faucet on weekends."
Damian didn't answer that. He reached into his coat pocket—the jacket he had hung over the back of a chair—and pulled out a small silver box. He opened it, pulled out a clean cotton swab, and dropped a small, clear vial onto the table between them.
Laurel looked at the vial. "What’s that?"
"A cheek swab," Damian said.
She stared at the white stick inside the glass tube for three long seconds before her eyes drifted back up to his face.
"You don't believe me," she said.
"I believe what I can prove," Damian said flatly. "In my world, Laurel, people who trust feelings end up in the bottom of a concrete pour under the Circle Interchange. I need to know."
"And if he’s yours?" she asked, her hands tightening into fists against the arm of the sofa. "What then? Do you buy him a suit? Do you give him a gun when he turns twelve?"
"If he’s mine," Damian said, his voice dropping into that dark, low register that made the heavy curtains in the room feel thicker, "he never has to eat cheap soup again. And nobody ever lays a hand on you while you’re in this state."
"And if he isn't?"
Damian looked at the boy’s face—the round forehead, the small, sharp nose that looked so much like his own mother’s portrait down in the hall.
"He’s yours," Damian said quietly. "That’s enough to keep him safe for tonight."
He reached down, picked up the cotton swab, and held it out to her.
"Do it," he said. "Or I’ll have the doctor do it while you’re asleep."
Laurel took the swab. Her hand was shaking so hard she almost dropped it on the rug. She looked down at the boy, who was breathing softly now, his little stomach rising and falling against the dark green velvet.
May you like
"You’re a monster," she whispered.
"No," Damian said, turning toward the door that led to his private study. "I’m just a man who knows how much things cost."
