Reed takes his glasses off and polishes them. “You resent being assigned to her.”
“I think you’re setting me up for failure.” Ari looks sidelong at Reed. “Your shifting of assignments to me has not gone unnoticed by Prometheus, and I don’t appreciate having to defend myself around him all the time. Did you know that he was in my hotel suite in Oxford? He found me after the gala. We had a rather unpleasant chat.” Ari lifts his chin and pushes his collar aside, showing Reed his smattering of wounds.
Reed makes a sound of mock sympathy. “Doesn’t look good,” he says.
Ari tightens his lips. “If Rudra had tried to kill me, would you have stopped him?”
“If Rudra had the balls to kill you, he would have done it. And yet here you are.”
Ari remembers Rudra’s words to him that night, slurred but not without truth.This is how they do it, turning us against each other.
“I think you play a risky game with your chosen one,” Ari says.
“Know what I think? I think Mozart means more to you than you’ve let on.” Reed leans closer to him. “And that you haven’t been entirely honest with me.”
Ari forces himself to return the man’s gaze without hesitation. The fear has started to seep back into his heart now, along with the memory of Sam on the beach, illuminated by the light of a full moon.
“Why the reluctance?” Reed says. “I thought Cleopatra was your friend.I see the pain on your face when we talk about her death. It hurts you, doesn’t it?”
“It won’t heal with more blood,” Ari answers quietly.
Reed slides the black folder on the table to him. “Perhaps you just haven’t been wounded enough yet,” he replies.
Ari takes the folder, his sense of dread rising. When he looks back at Reed, the light has hidden the man’s eyes again, turning his glasses into panels of flat white. Ari turns back to the folder. His heart starts to tremble.
He opens it.
The first photograph is a shot of a woman walking along a narrow street shaded by neem trees, a braid pulled over her shoulder and a little girl balanced on her hip, in the middle of an animated conversation with her father. Her limbs are long and lanky, her once-awkward teenage gait now graceful in the way of a grown woman. Their father’s hair has long since turned gray, and there is a slight hunch to his back, but he looks strong otherwise, and there is a smile on his bearded face.
His sister. His father.
Ari looks at the next photo. It is of his mother, older and softer, sitting in front of her house. It isn’t the house that Ari remembers. This house has a real gate, has a worker sweeping the driveway clear of leaves. His mother is surrounded by his aunts, fan fluttering in her hand, her sari billowing around her legs.
The next photo shows his uncle standing at a shop on a street that scratches at Ari’s memories, talking to the clerk. He’s gotten so thin. His beard has gone entirely white, and lines etch his face. Ari recognizes the way the cars bump along the road, can hear a distant echo of the roar of motorbikes and the calls from the nearby market. But even this looks different, the city streets both cleaner and more crowded than he remembers, the buildings in the distance more refined. Surat has transformed, too.
He feels like he has stepped outside of himself, looking passively at these images of people who have changed so much that they almost seem like strangers. At an unrecognizable homeland. He tries to speak, fails to find his voice, tries again.
“When were these taken?” he finally manages.
“Last week,” Reed replies.
Last week.
Last week, his sister and her child—hisniece,he’s an uncle now—were walking down the street with his father, and his mother was talking with his aunts, and his uncle was buying cigarettes. All these years of getting nothing but verbal promises of money being delivered to his family, receipts of a new car and a new house, impatient assurances that they are all better off because of Ari—all these years, and yet this is the first time Ari hasseenthem.
The knot of loneliness in his chest that has been there since he was a child tightens until it feels like it will break. Ari can’t help the tears that haze his vision. God. Why is he so sad? His heart is breaking because he barely recognizes them, because it has been so long that he can only see faint resemblances in them to what he remembers. Because he realizes that, if they saw him today, they would feel the same sense of detachment.
Because he has missed everything. He has lost them.
At least everyone is alive. Everyone is well. But this is not what Reed is telling him with these photos. This is a reminder that their wellness is due to Ari, their success tied to his success, their safety dependent on his obedience.
Reed takes the photos from Ari’s hands and slides them back into the folder. “Now, I’m curious, Shakespeare. Is there anything else from your meeting with Mozart that you recall? Anything you’ve neglected to tell me?”
His sister’s smile, genuine and full. His mother’s sari, pink and gold. Their fates, dangled before him.
“Think carefully,” Reed says, “about who you’re willing to fight for.”
“Her mother’s name is Connie Sun,” he says quietly. “Sam joined Grand Central to protect her.”
