Chapter 3: Don't Open the Door
I stood in the middle of my apartment with the notebook pressed against my chest and my phone face-up on the bed, the message still glowing on the screen.
*Put the notebook down.
Walk away.
Or what happened to Isabella happens to you.*
My mother had not simply gotten sick.
That thought landed in my body before my mind could process it.
My legs found the edge of the bed and I sat down hard.
The phone buzzed again.
Same unknown number.
*We know you're home.
We've been watching the building.*
I crossed to the window without thinking and looked down at the street.
A dark sedan was parked across from my entrance, engine running, no one visible through the glass.
It had not been there when I arrived.
I stepped back from the window.
My first instinct was to call Matteo.
I had his card — he had pressed it into my hand before I left the restaurant, folding my fingers around it himself.
But if Luca was the one watching me, and Luca was Matteo's security chief, then calling Matteo might mean telling Luca exactly where I was and what I had found.
I thought about the way Luca had said *without involving her further.* Not *keep her safe.* Not *protect her.* Without involving her.
As though I were a loose thread that needed cutting, not a person who needed protecting.
I put the notebook inside my coat, against my ribs.
Then I picked up my phone and did the only thing I could think of.
I called my neighbor, Dora.
Dora Kaplan was seventy-one years old, sharp as a blade, and had lived in the apartment beside mine for nine years.
She had fed me soup when I had the flu, sat with me the night I got the call about my last remaining aunt, and once chased a man twice her size out of our hallway with an umbrella.
She was the closest thing I had to family in Chicago.
She picked up on the second ring.
"Elena?
It's nearly midnight."
"Dora, I need you to do something and I need you not to ask me why."
A pause.
"All right."
"Leave your apartment right now.
Take your purse, take your phone, go to your daughter's place, and don't come back until I call you."
Another pause, longer this time.
"How serious is this?"
"Please, Dora.
Just go."
"I'm getting my coat," she said, and hung up.
I listened at my own door for a full minute.
The hallway was quiet.
I eased it open, slipped out, and took the back stairwell down to the alley behind the building.
The cold hit me like a wall.
I moved quickly, staying close to the brick, heading away from the street where the sedan was parked.
Three blocks east, I ducked into a twenty-four-hour diner and took the booth farthest from the door.
My hands were still shaking when I ordered coffee.
The waitress didn't look at me twice.
I put Matteo's card on the table and stared at it.
One number.
No name printed beneath it, just the card stock itself, heavy and cream-colored and slightly warm from my pocket.
Then my phone buzzed a third time.
Not the unknown number.
A different one.
A number I recognized.
Marco.
The garnish cook from Bellavita.
The one who had finished my plate before it went to Matteo's table.
*Elena.
It's Marco.
Don't call me back — they may have my phone.
Meet me at the corner of Wabash and 18th.
One hour.
Come alone.
I know who sent that message.*
I looked at the coffee the waitress had just set in front of me.
May you like
I hadn't taken a single sip.
I put money on the table, stood up, and walked back out into the cold.
