Chapter 5 - Sofia
By the time Adrien returned to Mercy General, morning had turned the windows the color of dirty steel.
Marco was waiting by the elevators with a security officer named Jenkins and a tablet in his hands.
"We have the caller," Marco said.
Adrien took the tablet.
The lobby camera showed a man in a baseball cap standing near the public phones at 7:03. He was maybe thirty, thin, nervous, wearing a delivery jacket. He made the call, hung up, and left through the revolving doors.
"Know him?" Marco asked.
Adrien shook his head.
Jenkins pointed to the screen. "We got the plate on his car. Local. Registered to a Daniel Mercer."
"Police?" Adrien asked.
Jenkins gave him a cautious look. "We reported it because the caller asked about a newborn by name."
Adrien almost told him to withdraw the report.
Almost.
That instinct was old muscle memory: keep outsiders out, solve problems inside.
He thought of Elena saying nothing has changed.
"Good," he said instead. "Let them handle the plate."
Marco looked at him sharply.
Adrien handed the tablet back.
"Problem?"
"No."
It sounded like yes.
In Elena's room, Sofia was awake.
Adrien had expected newborns to be vague, sleepy things. Sofia was neither. She stared up from Elena's arms with dark unfocused eyes and a furious little line between her brows.
Elena looked exhausted.
"You came back."
"I said I would."
"You say a lot of things."
He accepted that.
"My mother told me about Dad."
Elena's face closed.
"All of it?"
"I don't know what all of it is anymore."
He sat in the chair beside the bed.
"She said you were afraid I would raise Sofia inside the family."
Elena looked down at the baby.
"I was."
"Are you still?"
"Yes."
He felt the answer physically.
"Even now?"
"Especially now. You walked out of a meeting with twelve men because I called. Somewhere in your head that means you chose us. But Adrien, choosing us once isn't the same as building a life where we don't have to be rescued from your choices."
He said nothing.
Elena's eyes were red from lack of sleep, but her voice was steady.
"I loved you. I probably still do, which is inconvenient and not the point. The point is I cannot raise a child inside a system where love means surveillance and protection means obedience."
"I can change that."
"Can you?"
He hated how quickly the promise had come out.
She saw it too.
"You don't even know what that sentence costs yet."
Sofia made a small squeak.
Elena shifted her and winced.
Adrien stood immediately.
"What do you need?"
"Nothing. Sit down."
He sat.
Elena almost smiled.
It was the first thing all morning that felt like hope.
"Can I hold her?" he asked.
Elena looked at him for a long moment.
Then she nodded.
Adrien rose again.
"Support her head," Elena said.
"I know."
"You absolutely do not."
He almost argued, then stopped.
"Show me."
Elena placed Sofia into his arms.
The baby weighed less than some of the guns Adrien had carried and frightened him more than all of them.
He sat very still.
Sofia opened her mouth, yawned, and settled against his chest as if she had already decided he was furniture.
Elena watched him.
"She has your ears," she said.
Adrien looked offended. "Poor kid."
Elena laughed before she could stop herself.
The sound hit him harder than accusation.
For several minutes, nothing happened.
No one called. No one threatened anyone. The room hummed.
Adrien understood suddenly why ordinary life had mattered so much to Elena.
Ordinary life was not empty space between important events.
It was the thing people were trying to protect.
A knock came at the door.
Marco entered with a paper bag and stopped when he saw Adrien holding Sofia.
Something changed in his face.
Not surprise.
Grief.
Adrien noticed.
"What?"
Marco put the bag on the table. "Coffee. Food."
"That's not what I asked."
Marco looked at Elena.
Elena looked away.
Adrien's voice hardened. "What aren't you telling me?"
Marco rubbed his thumb against his finger.
"Daniel Mercer," he said. "The guy from the lobby."
"What about him?"
"He works nights loading trucks at Bellini Produce."
Adrien knew the name. Everybody did. Bellini Produce was one of the legitimate businesses owned by his uncle Vittorio.
Elena closed her eyes.
Adrien looked down at Sofia.
He wanted to hand her back and start making calls.
He could feel the old machinery inside him turning on.
Names. Cars. Men. Doors.
Then Sofia wrapped one tiny hand around the edge of his shirt.
Adrien stayed seated.
"Call the police detective handling the report," he told Marco.
Marco stared at him.
"And tell him what?"
"The truth. Mercer works for my uncle's company."
"You want the police looking at Bellini?"
"I want them looking at Mercer."
Marco lowered his voice. "Vittorio will see that as a declaration."
Adrien looked at the sleeping baby in his arms.
"Then for once," he said, "he can be the one who feels watched."
Before he left for home that evening, Adrien stopped at the nurses' station to ask Deena how often newborns needed to be fed.
Deena looked at him over her glasses.
"You planning to sit an exam?"
"I prefer knowing what I'm responsible for."
"Babies don't care what you prefer."
She wrote three things on the back of a discharge pamphlet: feed, diapers, sleep. Then she added a fourth.
Ask her mother.
Adrien folded the paper and put it in his wallet beside cards that opened doors to places Elena had never wanted to enter.
When he returned to the room, Elena was asleep and Sofia was making small restless noises in the bassinet. Adrien sat beside her without touching anything. For once there was no action available that would improve the situation. He could not negotiate with sleep. He could not order a baby to feel safe.
So he sat.
Twenty minutes later, Elena woke and found him there.
"You're still here."
"For another hour."
She looked at the clock.
"You gave yourself a shift?"
"Deena gave me instructions."
Elena glanced toward the pamphlet sticking out of his pocket and smiled faintly.
"That might be the most frightened I've ever seen you."
May you like
Adrien looked at Sofia.
"It is."
