Chapter 4 - The Domestic Audit
The social worker from the Department of Children and Family Services arrived at 4:00 PM on Thursday. Her name was Clara Finch, and she had spent twenty-two years looking through the closets and refrigerators of Chicago’s worst and best parents. She wore a sensible gray tweed jacket, carried a heavy leather clipboard, and possessed the kind of eyes that could spot a single drop of unwashed whiskey on a kitchen counter from ten yards away.
Dominic met her in the penthouse suite of Reyes Tower—a three-story residential fortress that sat above his executive offices. The space was magnificent, but it resembled an upscale Scandinavian museum more than a home. White marble floors. Low, angular charcoal sofas. No television. No toys. No evidence that anyone lived there except for a single man who ordered his meals from a French restaurant downstairs.
"Mr. Reyes," Clara Finch said, her pen already clicking against the clipboard as she stood in the center of the grand living room. "Let's be frank. You have zero record of domestic stability. You have three active corporate non-disclosure agreements with former domestic partners, your lifestyle is entirely nocturnal, and this building is registered as a high-security commercial entity. Where is the child sleeping?"
"Sophia has the east wing suite," Dominic said, leading her down the long glass corridor.
When he opened the door to the east suite, Dominic himself stopped dead in his tracks.
In the six hours since the court session, Felix and Hawk had been given a blank corporate credit card and twenty minutes to source "domestic infrastructure" from a local department store. They had taken the instruction with the literal, terrifying precision of military contractors.
The room looked like a pink logistics depot.
There was a toddler bed shaped like a pink racing car, a white vanity table with three identical plastic mirrors, and approximately forty-five stuffed rabbits arranged in perfect, symmetrical rows along the baseboards like infantry soldiers awaiting inspection. On the desk, seven boxes of crayons had been sorted by color into glass storage jars.
Sophia was currently sitting in the center of the pink racing car bed, her purple suitcase open beside her, systematically transferring her crayons from the jars back into her coat pockets.
Clara Finch walked into the room, her sensible shoes squeaking on the hardwood. She knelt down beside the bed, her clipboard resting on her knee. "Hello, Sophia. My name is Clara. I’m here to make sure you have everything you need."
Sophia looked at Clara, then at the clipboard. "You have a lot of lines on your paper," she said.
"I do," Clara smiled, though her eyes remained sharp. "Do you like your new room?"
"It’s too big," Sophia said, her small fingers stroking the ears of her original, worn-out rabbit. "And the rabbits don't smell right. They smell like a store."
Clara Finch noted something down on her paper. "Does your father spend time with you, Sophia?"
Sophia looked up at Dominic, who stood in the doorway, his arms folded, his face a wall of unreadable stone. "He watches his watch," Sophia said. "But he let me keep my dinosaurs in his car. And he told the red man that I’m his daughter."
Clara stopped writing. She looked back at Dominic, her expression shifting from professional skepticism to something closer to calculation. "Mr. Reyes, a child cannot eat pink racing cars or store-bought rabbits. She needs routine. She needs a pediatrician within forty-eight hours, she needs to be enrolled in a developmental preschool by Monday, and she needs to be out of this commercial tower during the hours when your... associate entities are entering the building."
"She’ll be enrolled at the Latin School of Chicago by tomorrow morning," Dominic said. "My office has already processed the endowment contribution."
"The Latin School has a three-year waiting list, Mr. Reyes," Clara said, standing up.
"The Latin School’s primary gymnasium sits on land owned by the Reyes Group, Ms. Finch," Dominic replied, his voice flat. "The waiting list doesn't apply to the ground lessor."
Clara Finch looked at him for a long, silent moment, then closed her clipboard with a sharp snap. "I will return on Monday morning, Mr. Reyes. If the child is not enrolled, or if I find that her routine is being determined by your corporate board meetings, I will file an emergency motion for removal before noon. Have a good evening."
As the door closed behind the social worker, Dominic walked over to the pink racing car bed. He looked down at Sophia, who had successfully packed all twenty-four of her original crayons back into her purple suitcase.
"Why do you keep everything in the suitcase?" Dominic asked.
May you like
Sophia looked up, her dark eyes steady. "Because Mama said we only stay until the numbers match. And then we go to the next place."
Dominic felt a sudden, strange tightness in his chest—a sensation he hadn't felt since the night Elena Vasquez had walked out of his Toronto apartment, leaving nothing but a mirror covered in soap. "You aren't going to a next place, Sophia," he said, his voice dropping into a dark, unyielding gravity. "The port belongs to us now. That means you stay in the tower."
