He places it on the table between us.
“Names,” he says. “Routes. Accounts. Three people who have been useful to me and one who has been useful to you. I am willing to make this simple. Give me what I want, and I will tell you where they are.”
Stefano looks at the folder and does not touch it. “You are offering me information to recover your children?”
“I am offering you money to stop pretending you care where they ended up.”
The room narrows around us.
I feel Stefano go still beside me.
Leon sees it and mistakes it for interest.
“They are young,” he continues. “They adapt. They always do. The boy is difficult, but that can be corrected. The girl is easier.”
My breath stops.
The first thing I feel is not rage.
It is Alice.
Not a memory exactly. More akin to a shadow rushing through every place inside me she ever occupied. Her voice on the phone. Her photographs of the twins. Her hand around my wrist when we were teenagers, dragging me through a crowd because she refused to let anyone leave her behind.
Then rage comes. Hot enough to burn like an inferno within.
"You do not get to talk about them like that," I say, making him answer for what he did.
Leon turns to me slowly.
For the first time, he really looks.
Not at the woman Stefano bought. Not at a pretty face sitting too close to a dangerous man.
At me.
Something moves behind his eyes.
Recognition does not arrive cleanly. It crawls.
“Maya,” he says.
My name in his mouth makes me want to break every bone in his body.
Stefano’s arm comes off the booth behind me.
Leon smiles.
Not because he is pleased.
Because he thinks he has found leverage.
“Alice had a sister,” he says softly. “I remember now.”
The room goes silent in a way that has nothing to do with the music.
“You are a difficult woman to find,” he continues. “I thought you had gone away after the funeral.”
“You should have stayed worried.”
