“He’s a mafia don, Maya.”
“I know what he is.”
The words fall between us.
I know what he is.
The truth has always been there. In the way rooms go quiet when he enters. In the way Omar watches every door. In the gun beneath his jacket, the men who vanish when he tells them to, the silence he wears like something cut to fit.
I knew.
That does not make the grief feel less stupid. It only makes it harsher.
Raven touches my elbow. “Come inside. We need your statement.”
I let her lead me out of the rain.
The debrief lasts almost three hours, and all I want is to get through it.
I answer questions because I have too. When someone asks whether Savarese had warned me he intended to use lethal force, I stare at the table until Raven takes over.
“No further questions on that point,” she says.
By the time they release me, it is nearly dawn.
Raven drives me to the hotel herself. Boston is washed clean by rain, the streets empty except for delivery trucks and the first tired commuters. The city looks colorless through the passenger window. Buildings blur past in gray stone and wet glass.
“You can stay with the team,” Raven says. “Or I can have someone take you back to Chicago tomorrow.”
“Are the children safe?”
Her hands tighten on the steering wheel. “Yes.”
“Are you sure?”
“Your relatives’ house is secure. Omar’s people are still on the estate. The Bureau has people watching every documented contact Leon had in Florida.”
“Stefano’s people.”
“Some of them.”
I close my eyes.
Raven is quiet for a moment.
“The case still holds,” she says. “Leon’s death does not erase the records we recovered. The men we picked up tonight will talk. The accounts will lead somewhere. There are enough witnesses from Miami to keep building.”
“That isn’t enough.”
“No,” she says. “It isn’t.”
I look at her.
She does not apologize for saying it. She just drives, and I let the silence ride with us.
At the hotel, she walks me to my room and waits while I unlock the door. The soft yellow light inside makes everything look staged. Bed made too neatly. Towels folded. A tray of untouchedroom-service food against the wall. I just want to shut the door and be alone.
Normal things pretending the world didn't split open in an alley.
