looked at the gravel between them.

“At first? No.

After you saw him? I don’t know.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“It’s the honest one.”

She hated him a little for that.

The envelope looked thick.

Rent.

Heat.

Medicine.

Maybe months of breathing room for Leo.

Maybe the price of telling herself that saving a man’s life could be separated from who he was.

She took it because she was tired, because Leo was cold, because morality felt different when a child was wheezing on a sofa.

“You never come near me again,” she said.

“You never come near my son.”

Dominic nodded.

“Understood.”

Behind them, the steel door opened.

Nico stepped out.

“He’s asking for her.”

Clara turned.

“No.”

“He said one minute.”

“He doesn’t get one minute.”

But then Carmine’s voice came faintly from inside, carried through the open door.

“Please.”

The word stopped her because men like him should not have known how to say it.

Clara should have left.

She knew that then, and she knew it later.

But she went back inside because a patient calling from a table still had power over the part of her that answered pain before judgment.

Carmine looked worse and better at the same time.

Worse because the fever had drained him of every illusion of strength.

Better because his breathing no longer sounded like drowning.

Clara stood beside the table, arms folded tightly.

“One minute.”

His gaze moved to the envelope in her hand.

“Not enough.”

“It’s more than enough.”

“For heat,” he said.

“For the boy.”

Her face hardened.

“Do not talk about him.”

“I had a daughter,” Carmine whispered.

The room went still in a different way.

Dominic looked down.

Clara said nothing.

“Six,” Carmine continued, each word costing him.

“Same age.

Asthma.

Couldn’t breathe when it got cold.”

The anger in Clara faltered despite herself.

“Where is she?”

Carmine looked past her toward the ceiling, but she could tell he was not seeing tile or light.

“Gone.

Long time.”

No one explained.

No one needed to.

Grief lived in the room as plainly as the blood on the floor.

Clara did not soften completely.

She could not afford to.

But she understood, suddenly, why his rule about children had sounded older than tonight.

“Then don’t waste the life I just helped you keep,” she said.

A faint line appeared between Carmine’s brows.

“What?”

“You have men with guns standing around you like that makes you safe.

It didn’t.

You have money and fear and people willing to die for you.

None of it stopped infection.

None of it stopped a nurse from being dragged off a street because your world eats everyone near it.”

Dominic started to speak.

Carmine lifted two fingers, barely, and Dominic went silent.

Clara leaned closer, her voice low enough that only Carmine and Dominic could hear.

“I am not impressed by you.

I am not grateful to you.

I saved you because you were dying in front of me.

That is all.

Now use whatever power you have left to keep this from touching my child or any other child.”

For a moment, Carmine only stared at her.

Then he gave the smallest nod.

“Dominic.”

“Boss.”

“The nurse goes home.

Clean.

Safe.

No tail she can see.

No tail she can’t.