Eight months of lying, and it ended because one old man looked at me for too long. Ten minutes earlier, I was in the service corridor behind the ballroom, counting. Forty-one steps from the kitchen door to the east stairwell. Six cameras between the elevator and Dante Moretti's study. Two guards on that study door on a normal night, three tonight, because the Don was finally home. I count when I'm scared. I started six years ago, the week my father was shot in a parking garage and the whole city agreed he'd deserved it. Stairs, exits, the seconds between footsteps. It doesn't fix anything. It just gives my brain somewhere to stand. "Carter!" Mrs. Halloran's voice cut down the hall like a dropped pan. "Are you hiding?" "Counting napkins." "Count them faster." I tugged my sleeve down over my wrist. The brass compass hung on its cord under my uniform, warm from my skin. My mother gave it to me the night before she disappeared. She said, Keep it where nobody can take it, and then she kissed my forehead like she was apologizing. It's the last thing I have of her. That and a lot of questions. Marta caught me at the kitchen door and pressed a bread roll into my hand without looking at me. The head cook had arms like a boxer, and for months she'd been feeding the thin new girl and pretending she wasn't. "Eat," she muttered. "You look like a coat hanger." "I'm fine." "You're a liar. Eat anyway." She had no idea. I ate it in four bites, standing up, and went to work. The ballroom of the Moretti Grand looked like money had thrown up on it, but elegantly. Three hundred guests. Chandeliers the size of small cars. A string quartet playing something sad and expensive. Men in dark suits stood in clusters with their hands quiet, which I'd learned was the most dangerous way for a man's hands to be. I carried a tray of champagne and made myself invisible. It's a skill. You keep your eyes at chest height, your face pleasant and empty, your shoulders a little rounded. Eight months, and not one person in this building had really looked at me. Teo Bruno, Dante's head of security, tapped my tray as he passed and took a glass he never drank from. He had the kind of grin that made you want to tell him your secrets. "Easy, Carter. You look like you're casing the place." My stomach dropped. "I'm terrified of dropping this." "Good. Terror's good for posture." He winked and was gone. I made myself breathe. Then the room changed. It didn't go quiet all at once. It leaned. Three hundred people turned a few degrees toward the doors, like flowers, and the quartet lost its place and found it again. Dante Moretti walked in. I'd seen photographs. Photographs lie by making people smaller. He was tall, in a black suit, no tie, no watch, no rings, nothing on him that said what he was worth, which somehow said it louder. His face looked built for giving orders and then never used for anything else. Thirty-four years old, and he carried himself like a man who'd stopped expecting good news a long time ago. He passed four feet from me. I counted it. I kept my eyes on his chest. Beside him walked Lucian Rossi, silver hair, kind face, one hand on Dante's shoulder like a father at a graduation. I knew everything about Lucian. He'd raised Dante after his parents died. He was the first person any family called when there was trouble, and people said he hadn't raised his voice in thirty years. He stopped in front of me and took a glass from my tray. "Grazie, cara." "Of course, sir." He didn't drink. He held the glass and watched me, and the air around us went thin. "What's your name?" "Sienna. Sienna Carter." "Carter." He smiled, slowly. "Funny. You stand like a dead man I used to know. Weight on the left, chin a little up, like you're waiting for someone to hit you." My hands wanted to shake. I counted. One. Two. Three. "I'm sorry, sir. I'm just nervous." "Dante." Lucian didn't turn his head. "Come look at this girl's face." Dante stopped. He turned. For the first time in eight months, somebody looked straight at me. His eyes were grey and very tired, and they went over my face once, forehead, nose, jaw, like he was reading a document. I saw the exact second something in them went cold. "Name," he said. "Sienna Carter." "The one you were born with." The quartet had stopped. I don't remember when. I'd rehearsed this moment on a hundred sleepless nights. Deny it. Cry. Run. But he was looking at me, and the old man was smiling, and my mother's compass was pressed against my ribs like a hand. I was so tired of being someone else. "Sienna Cole," I said. Nobody moved. Somewhere, a glass was set down very carefully. "Marco Cole's daughter," Dante said. "Yes." "You've worked in my house for eight months." "I've scrubbed your floors for eight months, Mr. Moretti. You never noticed." It was the wrong thing to say, and I'd say it again. Somebody in the crowd actually gasped. Dante's jaw tightened. He turned to the room, and when he spoke it wasn't loud. It was worse. Quiet carries when everyone is listening. "Gentlemen. This is the daughter of the man who sold my father to the Commission." "That's not true. My father never-" "Don't." One syllable. It landed like a slap. "Don't say his name to me." Something rose in my throat, hot and ugly. Six years of it. "You don't know what happened. None of you do-" "I know I watched my mother's coffin go into the ground when I was nine years old." His voice didn't shake. His hands did, just slightly. I saw it. "Cole is a stain on this house. She came here under a lie to rob me, or worse. Whatever she was to anyone in this building, she isn't now." He didn't look at me again. "No wages. No coat. Nothing leaves with her but what she walked in with. Get her out." Two guards took my arms. One of them I'd made coffee for. He wouldn't meet my eyes. They dragged me backward across the marble, my heels skidding, and the cord around my neck caught on a buckle and snapped. The compass hit the floor. It spun. It skated across the polished stone and stopped against the pointed heel of a green silk shoe. The woman in the shoe bent down. Dark hair, red lips, a face like a magazine cover. She turned the compass over once in her fingers, read the tiny letters on the back, and closed her hand around it. She looked at me. Not unkindly. More like I was a sum she hadn't finished. "Wait. That's mine. Please, that's mine-" Nobody listened. At the doors, I heard the guard behind me ask Lucian a question I'd spend the next year wishing I hadn't heard. "Does she go to the river, or the street?" "Dante?" Lucian said, soft as ever. Three hundred people didn't breathe. "The street," Dante said. "For now." "And the paper?" "I'll sign it in the morning." They threw me out the service door into the rain. No coat, no phone, thirty-one dollars folded in my shoe. The door shut behind me and the lock clicked. I stood on the wet pavement, shaking, counting. One. Two. Three. Across the street, a black car I hadn't noticed switched on its headlights. Somebody in it hadn't heard about morning.

Running in wet work shoes is a special kind of stupid. I learned that about four seconds after the headlights came on, when the car doors opened across the street and I realized I'd been standing there like a deer admiring the road. Two men got out. One was wide, a refrigerator in a wool coat. The other was thin and quick, with a phone pressed to his ear. Neither of them hurried, and that was what scared me. People who are sure they'll catch you don't need to hurry. "Miss Cole!" the thin one called, almost friendly. "Hey. Miss Cole, hold on a second." Of course they knew my name. I'd just said it to three hundred people. I ran. Left at the corner, because I'd counted the corner. Forty-three steps from the service door, then a left, then the bakery alley. I'd walked this block every Tuesday for eight months, carrying Marta's grocery list to the fish market, and I knew it the way you know a floor you've scrubbed on your hands and knees. Which storm drain was loose. Which door stuck. Which streetlight flickered like it couldn't make up its mind. My shoes slapped the wet pavement. Rain ran down the back of my collar, and my uniform clung to me like a second, colder skin. Behind me came a heavy set of footsteps, then a lighter pair, easy and patient. My lungs started to burn, and my brain did the thing it always does, which is arithmetic. The car was already there. That was what I couldn't get past. It had been sitting across from the service door with its lights off before Dante said a word about the street or the river or the morning. Nobody parks like that for a maybe. Somebody had decided what to do with me before the Don opened his mouth. I didn't like where that thought led, so I picked the answer that fit what I'd planned to feel for six years. Dante had put on a show for three hundred people and sent his dogs out the back. Of course he had. It was easier to hate one man than to start wondering about two. The bakery alley smelled like yeast and bleach. A boy in a white apron stood under the awning smoking, and when I tore past him he said, "Hey-" and then, because he was nineteen and wise in the ways of people running from things, "Never mind." I hurdled a stack of flour sacks, skidded through a puddle, caught myself on a dumpster, and kept going. The fish market was dark. Past the loading dock, the ice crates were stacked as high as my chest, and between two of them there was a gap just wide enough for a girl who'd skipped dinner for most of the year. I wedged myself in with my knees against my chin and pressed my hand over my mouth. The footsteps slowed. My heartbeat sounded like a fist on a door. I counted to stay inside my body. One. Two. Three. Four. And underneath the numbers, uninvited, I saw Dante Moretti's hands at the gala, shaking just slightly as he called my father a thief. I'd told myself it was rage. I told myself that again now. A pair of shoes stopped so close to my crate that I could have tied the laces. The thin man. I smelled his cologne, something sweet and expensive that didn't belong in a fish market, and I heard him murmur into the phone. "No, she's on foot. No." A pause. "I know what he said. He said morning." Another pause, and when he spoke again his voice was flat and careful. "Rossi says tonight." Silence. Then: "Understood." He hung up. The shoes turned and walked away, and a moment later the second man's heavier tread joined them. I heard the wide one say, "Check the laundromat. She's soaked. She'll want somewhere warm." Which was, annoyingly, correct. I stayed in the crates until my legs went numb. Rossi. Lucian Rossi, with the silver hair and the glass of champagne he never drank. The kind old man who'd rested a hand on Dante's shoulder like a father at a graduation. He said morning. Rossi says tonight. I filed it where I file everything, in a drawer at the back of my head marked LATER. It didn't mean anything yet. A man who'd raised Dante could be forgiven for finishing a job early, I told myself. A loyal man would see his boss go soft and clean up the mess before anyone had to feel guilty about it. I almost believed that. When the footsteps were gone, I crawled out, shaking so hard my teeth clicked. I had thirty-one dollars in my shoe, no coat, no phone, and nobody in this city who knew my real name except the people trying to kill me. The only light on the block was a sign at the far end, buzzing in the rain. SUNRISE WASH & FOLD. OPEN 24 HOURS. They'd check it. They'd said so. But the windows were fogged and yellow and warm, and somewhere inside a dryer was going round and round, and I wanted to be a sock in it so badly I could taste it. I took the long way, through the back lot, and pushed through the staff door, because I'd learned that every business has one and it's never locked. The laundromat was nearly empty. A TV bolted to the wall played a game show on mute. Rows of washers, a vending machine, the smell of detergent and warm lint. At the far end, an old woman sat at the folding counter with a stack of sheets and an unlit cigarette in the corner of her mouth. Silver bun. Cardigan the color of weak tea. She looked up when I came in, took in the soaked uniform, the bare neck, the shaking, and said nothing at all. I scanned the room. Twelve washers. One cabinet in the corner with a broken latch, labeled SUPPLIES. "Please," I whispered. She tilted her head toward the cabinet. Then she went back to folding. I climbed in. It smelled like bleach and old cardboard. I pulled my knees up, and through the crack in the door I watched the old woman snap a sheet in the air as if she'd spent the whole night waiting for something to do with her hands. The bell over the front door rang. Boots. Two sets. One heavy, one light. "Evening, ma'am," said a friendly voice I'd just heard in the dark. "We're looking for a girl."

The old woman didn't look up from her sheets. "A girl," she said, like she was tasting the word. "What kind of girl?" "Twenty-three. Dark hair. Wet." The thin man tried a smile on for size. "Wearing a uniform from the Moretti Grand." "Wet." She snapped a pillowcase flat. "Sweetheart, it's pouring. Everybody's wet. I've got three machines that eat quarters, a husband who's been dead since two thousand nine, and a nephew who owes me eight hundred dollars. If you find a girl, send her over. I could use help with these sheets." The wide man was already walking the aisle between the washers. He checked the bathroom. He kicked the side of the vending machine, for reasons I will never understand. Then he stopped in front of the supply cabinet, and I stopped being a person and became one long held breath. His shadow slid across the crack in the door. "Touch that," the old woman said mildly, "and I call Father Michael. Then I call my nephew. Then, if I'm not satisfied, I call my other nephew, who is a cop." The shadow didn't move. "That's a lot of nephews," the thin man said. "It's a big family." She set the pillowcase on the pile. "Take an umbrella from the bucket on your way out. Bring it back." The silence lasted eleven seconds. I counted. Then the wide man grunted, the bell rang, the door sighed shut, and the room filled up again with the sound of a game show audience laughing on mute. I stayed in the cabinet anyway. My legs had stopped taking instructions. "You can let go of that breath," the old woman said. "They went left. Men like that always go left." I came out one joint at a time, like a newborn deer. She was already pouring something steaming from a thermos into its cap. She pushed it across the counter, and I wrapped both hands around it so tightly that I almost burned them. "I'm Rosa," she said. "Rosa Delgado. I own this place, God help me. You don't have to tell me your name." "Sienna." "There. Now it's a friendship." She rummaged under the counter and dropped a gray sweatshirt in front of me. UNIVERSITY OF SOMETHING, with a hole in one elbow. "Lost and found. It's been there since twenty sixteen. Nobody's coming back for it." I pulled it over my head. It smelled like dryer sheets and somebody else's life, and it was the kindest thing anyone had handed me in a year. "I have thirty-one dollars," I said, and tried to fish a damp bill out of my shoe. Rosa stared at me as if I'd offered to pay in teeth. "Put that back. Keep your money in your shoe. It's where I'd keep it." I laughed. It came out cracked, and somewhere in the middle it turned into something else, and I had to press the heel of my hand against my mouth until it stopped. Rosa became extremely interested in a fitted sheet. I slept two hours on the folding table with my cheek on a stack of warm towels. I don't remember falling asleep. I remember the last thing I thought, and it wasn't about Dante or the gala or the car. It was my father. Marco Cole was a bookkeeper, and a good one. He wore pressed shirts and kept his pencils in a coffee tin, and every night after dinner he sat at our kitchen table with a ledger the size of a cinder block. When I was five, he taught me to read a column of numbers like it was a face. Look for the one that's lying, tesoro. Numbers don't lie. People do. The morning he died, he kissed my forehead at the door and said he'd be home for dinner. I was seventeen. I heard it on the radio at four o'clock, a man shot in the Fenwick Street parking garage, believed to have stolen from his employer. By midnight my mother had packed one bag and pressed a brass compass into my palm and told me to keep it where nobody could take it, and by morning she was gone. I never saw her again. After that I spent six years learning how to disappear in plain sight. When I woke, the windows had gone gray. "Rosa." My voice came out like a rusty hinge. "I need to get back into the Moretti Grand." "That's the dumbest thing I've heard since my husband proposed." She didn't look up from her crossword. "Why?" Because under a loose floorboard in room 214 of the staff dorm, wrapped in a pillowcase, was the only thing of my father's I had left. A small black notebook, soft as cloth, filled with initials and dates and columns of numbers I'd stared at for six years without understanding. It was the reason I'd taken the job. It was the reason I hadn't just left the city and started over. If Dante's men found it, they'd burn it, and my father would stay a thief forever. I told her a version of that. Rosa listened, moved the unlit cigarette from one side of her mouth to the other, and picked up the phone. "Tomás," she said. "Wake up. You owe me eight hundred dollars." Her nephew drove for the linen company that serviced the Grand, and he showed up at five in a white truck with a cart full of folded sheets. He didn't ask a single question, which I took to mean he'd been raised by Rosa. I climbed into the cart. He piled towels on top of me. I rode into the loading dock of the Moretti Grand curled up like a pastry in a box, and I have never been so grateful for fabric softener. The service corridor was only half awake. I heard Mrs. Halloran's voice somewhere ahead, sharp as a dropped pan, and Tomás wheeled me straight past her. "Sheets," she said, and sniffed. "Finally." I almost died of a laugh. I knew the service elevator, which camera swung left, which guard took his coffee on the hour. I knew room 214, third door down, and when I pushed it open my stomach turned over. Empty. The mattress was stripped. The closet was bare. My two uniforms, my one good bra, my chipped mug, all gone. I dropped to my knees and dug my nails under the floorboard by the radiator. It came up easily. Too easily. Nothing but dust. "Looking for this?" I turned around. Teo Bruno stood in the doorway with a paper cup of coffee in one hand and, in the other, a small black notebook.