I almost smile again. "Having a mother who understands people?"
"Having a mother who understands you."
The way he says it — quiet, unadorned, like it slipped out without permission — makes me go still. It's the first thing he's said that feels like it cost him something. He doesn't seem to notice, or pretends not to, taking a sip of his water and looking out the window at the gray afternoon.
I look at him in profile and think about what it would be like to grow up seen by your mother like that. Not managed or presented or positioned, the way I've been my entire life, the mayor's daughter, always one step removed from being a person and one step closer to being a symbol.
"What are you actually researching?" he asks, eyes still on the window.
"Institutional corruption. How power structures protect themselves."
He turns back to me. "Why?"
"Because someone I know got hurt," I say carefully. "And the people who should be asking questions aren't."
He holds my gaze. "So you are."
"Trying to."
His eyebrows flick up briefly. "And what have you found?"
"Surface-level things. Academic theory. Nothing that explains how it actually works in practice — how someone with enough power can make things disappear without leaving fingerprints."
He's quiet for a moment. His finger traces the edge of the table, back and forth, and I watch it without meaning to.
"Power doesn't leave fingerprints," he says finally, "because it doesn't do its own dirty work. It creates systems. Obligations. Debts. And then it calls them in when it needs to." He pauses. "You're not going to find what you're looking for in academic theory because academia studies power from the outside. You need to understand it from the inside."
I stare at him.
He is so smart.
I bet he’s like his mother.
"How do you know so much about this?"
"I told you." His eyes meet mine. "I grew up around people who think they run things."
I smile. "Think?” I lean forward. “Do they or do they not?"
"Some of them." A thoughtful pause. "The ones who are actually dangerous don't look dangerous. They look reasonable. Measured. They sit on benches and sign documents and attend fundraisers, and everyone calls them honorable."
Something cold moves through me.
He's describing Judge Ravenshaw so precisely that for one suspended second, I wonder if he knows. If this is intentional. If he's telling me something without telling me something.
But his expression is neutral. Distant. Like he's describing a category of person, not a specific one.
I'm watching him trace the spine of the book when it hits me.
Not slowly. All at once, like something clicking into place that should have clicked when I first saw his face.
The hospital. The dark hoodie. The sling on his arm. His eyes. I go very still.
When I look at his arm, I say, "You were at the hospital."
He doesn't react. Doesn't look up from the book. "Was I."
Not a question. Not a confirmation. Just those two words sitting in the air between us like he's waiting to see what I'll do with them.
