Chapter 1 - The Green CrayonThe silence of the booth pressed hard against my ribs, heavy and suffocating despite the warm, buttery aroma of griddle smoke hanging in the air.
Emily didn't hover awkwardly when Luca failed to answer. She reached into the wide front pocket of her faded green apron and pulled out a small, worn box of Crayola crayons alongside a fresh paper placemat featuring a maze and a outline of a vintage pickup truck.
She set the placemat flat on the formica table between us. Then she tipped the box slightly, letting three crayons roll across the wood grain: a crimson red, a cobalt blue, and a pale forest green.
"If you ever feel like drawing while you wait, these are yours," Emily said softly, her voice carrying a quiet, unhurried warmth. "No pressure at all, chief."
She stood up smoothly, offering me a quick, professional nod before heading toward the kitchen pickup window.
My phone buzzed against my thigh again. A fourth text message.
3 MINUTES, VINCENT. OR WE COME INSIDE.
My jaw set until my teeth ached. Under the table, my hand slid inside my tailored jacket, my fingers brushing against the cold, matte-black grip of my concealed SIG Sauer.
My eyes swept the diner's perimeter with cold, practiced precision. Through the grease-stained glass window, past the row of parked pickup trucks, a dark grey SUV sat idling by the dumpster near the tree line. The front passenger window was rolled down three inches—just enough for the glint of a high-powered lens.
They were Moretti’s men. I knew the tactical placement. Anthony Moretti had been trying to breach my North Jersey shipping docks for six months, ever since my father passed and left me sole control of the Romano territory. But bringing his enforcers thirty miles out into a quiet township to threaten my six-year-old son crossed a line that could only end in blood.
I looked back at Luca.
My boy was still staring straight ahead at the parking lot, his small shoulders tense under his navy wool sweater.
For two years—ever since the night an arson attack destroyed our secondary lodge in Vermont and took his mother, Maria, from us—Luca had retreated into an impenetrable vault of silence. Doctors, child psychologists, specialists from Manhattan to London—all of them had shaken their heads, calling it severe post-traumatic mutism.
My heart bled every single day for the boy who used to giggle while kicking a soccer ball across our lawn.
Suddenly, a small, pale hand reached across the formica surface.
Luca’s fingers brushed past the red crayon. He bypassed the blue.
His small thumb and forefinger pinched around the forest green crayon.
My breath trapped in my throat. I didn't dare move. I didn't even dare breathe out.
Luca pulled the paper placemat toward his chest. He turned the green crayon point-down against the white paper. Slowly, with painstaking, unsteady deliberation, he pressed down until the paper creaked.
He drew a long, curved line across the top of the truck outline. Then another.
Then, his small, dry lips parted slightly.
May you like
A raspy, soft sound—a voice I hadn't heard in seven hundred and thirty days—struggled out of his chest, barely louder than the hum of the diner's refrigerator:
"Green... like... Mom's... garden..."
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