After His Trip With His Mistress, the Mafia Boss Came Home

By early autumn, the trees along Mercer Street in SoHo had turned the color of burnt copper, their leaves drifting down onto the historic cobblestones like scattered coins.

The four-story commercial loft that my grandfather had purchased in 1968 had undergone a total, magnificent resurrection.

The industrial metal shutters that Roman’s logistics companies had installed during the money-laundering era had been removed, replaced by soaring, twenty-foot arched windows of restored cast-iron that flooded the interior with the clean, golden light of the afternoon sun.

The ground floor was no longer an un-marked corporate transport office.

It was the newly dedicated St. Clair Center for Document Conservation & Public Heritage—a non-profit research institution where twelve young women from the City University of New York were currently studying archival preservation on full, four-year fellowships funded by our private endowment.

On the fourth floor, where the private residential loft overlooked the rooftops of lower Manhattan, the world was a sanctuary of heat, light, and sacred peace.

The wide heart-pine floorboards gleamed with natural beeswax; the exposed brick walls were lined with four thousand volumes of art history and maritime law; and in the center of the living room, beside an expansive bay window filled with potted citrus trees, stood an antique, hand-carved mahogany crib from the Hudson Valley.

Inside the crib, nestled beneath a soft swaddling blanket of organic cream-colored wool, lay two-month-old Clara.

She was magnificent.

A thick shock of dark chestnut hair, delicate, translucent skin, and large, intelligent hazel eyes that were currently tracking the dancing shadows of the mobile suspended above her bed.

Sitting in a wide velvet rocking chair beside the crib, holding an open edition of the New York Law Journal, was David Brennan.

The sixty-three-year-old attorney had stripped off his corporate courtroom suits completely, wearing an unbuttoned flannel shirt, dark corduroy trousers, and wool socks, his reading glasses perched low on his nose as he rocked the chair with a slow, rhythmic toe-tap.

"The appellate division denied his final leave to appeal forty minutes ago, Vivien," David said softly, his gravelly voice remarkably gentle in the quiet nursery.

I walked out of the open kitchen, carrying two ceramic mugs of fresh-brewed peppermint tea, wearing an oversized gray cashmere sweater over dark denim trousers.

"Which appeal was that, David?" I asked, setting a mug on the low stone table beside his chair.

"The petition to contest the testamentary spendthrift trust for Clara," David replied, sliding a certified legal notice from his briefcase. "His public defender argued that the Columbia County timberlands were marital property subject to equitable distribution. Judge Harrison issued a three-page memorandum opinion stating that a forged signature on a commercial loan document constitutes a complete, un-waivable forfeiture of all equitable claims under the Clean Hands Doctrine."

David chuckled, taking a sip of his tea.

"The judge added a footnote suggesting that if Mr. D’Angelo filed another frivolous motion from Otisville, she would hold his appellate counsel in personal summary contempt."

I sat down on the wide window seat, tucking my legs beneath me, looking out over the roofs of SoHo toward the distant, shimmering towers of the Financial District.

For eleven years, those towers had looked like an impenetrable iron fortress. They had looked like a world where men with private security teams and offshore accounts could take whatever they wanted from the people who did the work.

They didn't look like a fortress anymore.

They looked like glass and stone. Fragile things that could be broken into dust by an honest woman with a library card and a public records search.

Little Clara stirred in her crib, letting out a soft, contented gurgle, her tiny fist reaching out to bat at a suspended wooden gull.

I stood up, walked over to the crib, and lifted my daughter into my arms with effortless, practiced tenderness.

Her head rested against the hollow of my shoulder, her sweet, milky breath warm against my neck, her small body completely relaxed in the certainty of her mother's grip.

"She has your father’s chin, Vivien," David said softly, watching us from the rocking chair.