I gasp. “How many—”

“Hundreds, maybe. That’s what they’re saying, at least. It’s a shame. A damn shame. They were good men. They deserved better than what they got.” He clears his throat, tears swimming in his eyes. “They’re mounting rescue efforts to go down and treat people. To help with the bodies. There’s a real risk of disease spreading and becoming an issue with that many corpses.”

“Your medical training will be useful.”

“It will be. I don’t want to leave you and Lucy, not when you don’t know where your husband is, or your aunt, when you’re afraid, but you saw what it was like down there. I worked beside so many of those men. I have a duty to them. If there are people to be treated, rescued, they’re going to need all the help they can get.”

“Of course.”

Worry fills me, but my fear hardly seems reasonable in the face of all everyone else has lost.

“I’ll be back in a day or two.” John leans forward, and his lips brush my forehead, the scent of his soap filling my nostrils.

There’s so much I wish to say, but words seem inadequate, and as I try to conjure the right ones, they slip away from me. I never realized giving birth would be such exhausting work, but I’m drained, my limbs heavy, gait sluggish, brain foggy. The nurses say it’s my body’s response to the two shocks—the storm and labor—but I can’t help but wonder if I’ll ever feel like myself again.

“I’ll come back to you soon,” he promises.

Thirty

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 6, 1935

Mirta

The smell of death surrounds us, the decay of flesh unbearable. What was an island paradise now feels unmistakably like hell.

There’s a lawlessness down here, a sense of fear that has settled among the survivors. Looters scavenge the beaches, stealing from empty, damaged houses.

I am someone I no longer recognize, a feral creature who has lost all sense of niceness and politeness, who is concerned with one thing and one thing only:

Survival.

“There’s a boat,” Anthony shouts, and I follow him out the front door, to the space where our dock used to be before the storm hit, and there’s a boat waiting for us.

The Coast Guard.

It’s finally our turn to leave.

* * *

—

They’ve set up assistance for the storm survivors at the First Baptist Church in Homestead, Florida, and people trickle in all day long after we arrive, the seriously injured heading north to the hospital in Miami.

One of Anthony’s local friends and business partners greets us at the church, dropping off a car and some fresh clothes for us, a few essentials.

We arrive at the Biltmore Hotel in Coral Gables in the early evening, checking into a sumptuous suite.

Anthony leaves me alone to make some phone calls and meet with his business associates. I undress, sinking into a warm bath and washing away the grime of the past few days. Anthony sends up food with a note not to wait for him, and after my bath and a quick phone call to my family in Havana to let them know I’m fine, I dine on steak paired with a fine vintage of red wine, devouring the thick, juicy cut of meat with a hunger I’ve never experienced before.

After I’ve finished, chocolate mousse for dessert, the hotel room door opens, and Anthony crosses the threshold. He seems exhausted, the suit he changed into earlier rumpled, his hair mussed.

“How did your meetings go?” I ask, rising to greet him with a kiss.

“Things seem to be in order. I got us tickets for the railroad to take us back to New York. With everything that happened, it seems best to go home as soon as possible. If Frank Morgan is going to move against me, I need to be prepared. I’m too exposed here.” He pours himself a drink from the wine bottle sitting on the table. “We should have done this all along. We should have stayed in some elegant hotel rather than roughing it like we did. I’m sorry I took you down there, that I put you in danger. I wanted us to get to know each other, away from everyone else and all the stories of my past.” He gives a bitter laugh. “I wanted you to get to know me without seeing me as some gangster who wasn’t worth your time. I know we’re an unusual match. I know if things were different, you could have married someone far better than me. But I wanted to make you happy.”

I wrap my arms around him, resting my head against his chest, making a space for myself in the curve of his embrace.

“I keep seeing that man holding a knife to your neck,” he whispers.

“I keep seeing his eyes in the moments before he died,” I confess.

“You shouldn’t feel guilty about that.”

“You keep saying that, but it doesn’t make it easier. Will there be other men who come after us? Is this what our future will look like?” I take a deep breath. “One day, will a man hold a knife to one of our children’s necks?”

“I will never let that happen.”

“How will you stop it? You told me your enemies want what you have, that power is a target on your back.”

“What would you have me do? Get out of the business altogether? There are those who will view me abandoning my less legitimate interests as a sign of weakness, who will be emboldened by it and will strike against me because they believe they can.”

“Then make it impossible for them to see you as weak. But this life—how will we raise a family like this? How will we be happy if we are constantly glancing over our shoulders, fearing the next attack?”

“Is that what you want from me? A family? After what you’ve seen of my life?”

“What else is there?”

“I don’t know.” He rakes a hand through his hair. “You could go back to Cuba. Buy a house close to your family. You’d be safer there. I would understand if that’s what you wanted. This marriage—I was wrong to think I could bring a wife into this life. To go about things as I did. I’m so sorry.”

His apology isn’t enough.

Once, I would have been grateful for it, taken the scraps he tossed my way as an encouraging sign that he was a good man, that he respected me.

It’s not enough.

I want it all—a partnership, his love, and I want the safety and security of a future where I don’t have to worry that I will be collateral damage for another man’s whims.

I demand it.

“I’m not going back to Cuba. I am your wife. My place is by your side. Those promises we made when we married each other—I want them. But we can’t have that life if we’re constantly in danger. And what’s the alternative? We go into hiding somewhere?