Part 4 — The Mafia Boss Came to the Abandoned Infant’s Crib, but When Everyone Saw the Name Engraved on the Ring, Everyone in the Room Stopped Breathing

And he is standing behind your door now…

When Thomas said these words, the light in the corridor suddenly went out.

The monitors’ screens continued working, but darkness covered the rest of the unit. Wires and tubes appeared as gray lines. Somewhere far away, the elevator bell rang.

Vincent handed Serafina over into my arms.

“Where is the rear exit?”

“We cannot take the infant out of here,” I said.

“Then we will stay here.”

“Are armed people waiting for you?”

“No. They are better armed than I am.”

Then for the first time I saw that Vincent Moretti was truly afraid. Not for his own death. For the baby.

My mobile phone rang again.

This time it was the hospital director.

“Elena, lock the doors,” he said. “Security is already coming.”

“Who got in?”

“Two people with false documents. We gave their descriptions to the police.”

“Carlo Bellini?”

Silence.

“We do not know yet,” the director replied. “But you must get Moretti out of there immediately.”

Vincent looked at the phone.

“I will not leave here until Serafina is safe.”

“This is a hospital, not your hideout,” I told him.

“That is precisely why it is the only place where they cannot touch her yet.”

Something heavy struck the door. Mariam stepped back in fright. Daniel picked up a small oxygen cylinder, although his hands were trembling so much that he could barely lift it.

“Step back,” I told everyone. “Stay close to the babies.”

At the second удар the door shook.

Vincent took out his phone and called someone.

“Armani, give the recording and all the accounts to the police. No, do not wait for me. Now.”

“Your lawyer will object,” Thomas told him.

“Then he is no longer my lawyer.”

There was no third удар. Noise broke out in the corridor, then several sharp commands were heard. The door opened and police officers entered. Behind them stood the head of hospital security, his hands bloody.

“We arrested two men,” he said. “The third escaped. Carlo was not there.”

Vincent looked at Thomas.

“Prepare the car.”

“Are you planning to escape?”

“No. I am going to the police.”

It turned out to be the most dangerous decision of his life. But this time he could no longer retreat.

In a small police room, that same evening, the recording was shown several times. Carlo’s voice came from the walls. Vincent watched the screen, and the color drained from his face.

“Nor will your father live long enough to learn where his granddaughter disappeared.”

The recording ended.

The detective turned off the sound.

“Is this the voice of your former associate?” he asked.

Vincent nodded.

“Yes.”

“And you understand that in this recording he himself admitted an attempted abduction and a crime against Lucia?”

Vincent looked at the screen.

“I understand.”

“Then why do you look as if you are hearing this for the first time?”

Vincent said nothing for a long time.

Then he replied quietly:

“Because for the first time I heard what I was teaching my people. I thought that if I gave them money and rules, I would protect my family. In reality, I gave them my silence.”

A lawyer stood beside him. He closed the folder.

“Mr. Moretti, I cannot continue your defense in this case.”

“Why?”

“Because now it is important to me that the truth survive, not your reputation.”

Vincent nodded.

“For the first time, you did the right thing.”

The next morning the police found Carlo’s old warehouse. There they discovered Lucia’s belongings, several false passports, and money intended for a hospital employee. Carlo was arrested at the border three days later.

He denied everything.

But the recording, the letter, and the bank transfers proved sufficient against him. Lucia’s body was later found beside the well of an old farm. At the funeral Vincent took only one thing with him—her ring.

Serafina remained in the hospital for another five weeks.

Vincent came to her crib every day, but this time wearing the badge of a charitable volunteer. He sat for hours and read books to the baby. He no longer tried to give orders. He no longer looked toward the door every few seconds.

One evening I noticed that he was standing beside the empty incubator.

“What happened?” I asked.

“Her crib is empty.”

“She will go home soon.”

“I know.”

“You should be happy.”

He ran his hand along the edge of the incubator.

“Happiness still needs to be learned.”

Serafina was not officially entrusted to Vincent. The court gave him temporary guardianship, but on one condition: Vincent would withdraw from all illegal activities and fully assist the investigation.

He signed.

Then he sold his companies, handed his illegal accounts over to the police, and left the city. No one knew where he lived. Only I knew that he rented a small house with Serafina in the outskirts of Omaha.

Three months later I went there.

There was still nothing hanging on the walls of the house. There was one box in the living room, and baby bottles were arranged in the kitchen. Beside the door I found an old photograph—Lucia, about sixteen years old, leaning against her father’s shoulder.

On the back of the photograph Vincent had written one sentence: “I could not protect this child, but I will not lose her child.”

“How are you?” I asked.

“Every morning I learn how not to be afraid.”

“And is it working?”

“Sometimes.”

Serafina sat at his feet and was building a tower with wooden blocks. When the tower fell, instead of crying she looked at Vincent.

“Again from the beginning, little one,” he told her.

The words were simple, but Vincent lowered his eyes. It was as if he had learned precisely from this child that falling did not mean the end.

Six months passed.

I was still working at the hospital. In the morning I no longer drank coffee by the unit’s door; first I checked every baby’s crib, then allowed myself to drink one sip. Serafina’s photograph stood on my desk. In the photograph she was wearing one yellow sock and holding a white plastic moon.

Vincent called me once a week.

“Today she said ‘Dad’ for the first time,” he told me once.

“Did she say it to you?”

“Not yet. To the wall.”

“Then the wall must be jealous.”

Vincent laughed. It was the first time I had heard him laugh, and there was neither power nor danger in it.

On the first day of winter, Serafina sent me a drawing. Three figures stood on the sheet: a little girl, a tall man, and a woman holding a large red heart in her hands.

“Who is this?” I asked when Vincent called me by video.

Serafina put her finger against the screen.

“Elena.”

That evening my phone received a message from an unknown number.

“I have lost everything. Money, house, people. But you know that I can become a different person. Come. Talk to me just once.”

It was Vincent.

I stared at the screen for a long time. Earlier, I would have run immediately after such a message. Saving a criminal had almost become a habit for me. But I looked at Serafina’s drawing and wrote a reply:

“You have already become a different person. Now you do not need my help anymore. It is your job to prove this change to her every day.”

His reply came several minutes later.

“I understand.”

Nothing more.

That same night Vincent placed Lucia’s ring in Serafina’s room, inside a small wooden box. He loved not the ring’s golden shell, but the words engraved inside it—“Lucia, while you breathe.”

Even years later, when Serafina went to school for the first time, the ring still lay in that box. Vincent no longer wore it. He said that some names should be carried not on a finger, but in life.

And that day I attached a small white plastic moon to the unit’s door—exactly like the one in Serafina’s first drawing.

The moon no longer guarded the door.

Now the door was open.