Chapter 2 - The Logic of Children
Addy didn't walk into the office; she marched.
She carried the stuffed alligator under her left arm like a soldier carrying a rifle, her small sandals clicking rhythmically against the polished floorboards. She stopped five feet from Vincent’s chair, standing perfectly still, her dark eyes looking up at him with an unblinking gravity that made his chest ache in a way the knife wound hadn't.
"Hello, Uncle Vincent," she said. Her voice was light, clear, completely devoid of the trembling shock other people expected from children who had witnessed murder attempts.
"Come closer, Addy," Vincent said, holding out a hand that still looked translucent against the wool blanket.
She hesitated for a second, then stepped forward, planting her shoes right over the spot where the Persian rug had been scrubbed raw. She didn't look down at the floor. She looked at him.
"Does your side hurt?" she asked.
"A little," Vincent admitted. "Do you remember the other night, Addy? When the man came in here?"
"The man in the dark jacket," she said promptly. "He walked fast. He made the magnolia blossoms blow."
"And when you saw me... when you came into the room," Vincent said, leaning forward despite the stitch-pulling agony, "were you scared?"
Addy tilted her head. She looked down at her alligator, patted its green felt snout, and then looked back up at her uncle. "Scared of what?"
"Of me being hurt. Of the blood."
"Blood washes out," she said with the simple, devastating logic of a child who watched her mother clean the estate every morning. "Mama uses cold water for blood. Hot water sets it."
Vincent let out a short, sharp breath that was half-laugh, half-cough. He leaned back in his chair, closing his eyes for a second. Cold water sets it. He wondered if the man in the dark jacket knew that. He wondered if Marcus Ellery knew that.
"Your mother showed you that red button on the phone," Vincent said softly. "Did she tell you what it was for?"
"She said if the sky falls down, I push it," Addy replied.
"And did the sky fall down the other night?"
"No," Addy said, her small face tightening into a serious frown. "Just you. You fell sideways like a sack of meal. But I pushed the button, so you didn't stay down."
Vincent opened his eyes. The girl was four years old. She had processed an act of extreme violence with the emotional detachment of a master accountant auditing a ledger. No tears. No screaming. Just an input, an error, and the correct procedural response.
She’s mine, a sudden, terrifying thought whispered through the back of Vincent’s mind. Not by blood alone—though her mother’s silence and his own sprawling family tree had tangled roots across the bayou—but by nature. She possessed the cold, mechanical core required to survive in a world where men like Vincent Castellano made their living in the gray spaces between the law and the swamp.
"Addy," Vincent said quietly. "If I give you a secret, can you keep it the way you kept the button?"
Addy gripped her alligator tighter. "Is it a good secret?"
"It's a heavy one," Vincent said.
Before she could answer, the heavy oak door swung open without a knock. Marcus Ellery stepped into the room, his face dark, his suit jacket unbuttoned, holding a folded sheet of fax paper in his hand.
May you like
Marcus took one look at Addy, then at Vincent, and stopped dead.
---
