Page 18 of Baby for My Ex's Brother

Emergency room visits—none. Childhood medical records—standard vaccinations, one broken finger at age nine, a bout of strep throat at eleven. No stitches recorded. No trauma documented.

But there’s that scar. It’s old and gnarly, likely from her childhood.

A child with a facial laceration that required no emergency room visit created an adult who decided questions would not be asked. An adult who controlled the narrative, the household, and theaftermath. I’ve seen this pattern before in files that cross my desk, in different contexts, same architecture.

I know what it means when injuries go undocumented.

I also know burns. It is not a skill I chose, but it’s mine, the way a butcher knows his cuts without being asked. Accidents have a grammar. A grab leaves a stripe across the palm. A splash scatters. A child who falls against a radiator takes the injury at an angle, glancing, shallow at the edges, because the body’s whole job in that moment is to get away, and the body is good at its job.

Hers is at the hairline, even-edged, deep enough to kill the follicles in a clean line and leave the regrowth white. That isn’t an accident. That’s prolonged contact with a heat source, held steady, while a child screamed.

Anger arrives without a target, directed at people I’ve never met, over a decades-old injury, on behalf of a woman I’ve known for days.

It’s foolish, and yet, I can’t stop it.

In my line of work, I’ve done many unspeakable things. But I do not hurt children, nor does anyone in my employ. Whoever did this is a monster of the highest order, and as the anger seeps deeper, my hands crave the feeling of their throat’s collapse.

This is not good. Reasonable, perhaps, but not good. Because now, I can think of little else.

I recognize the symptoms. I’ve watched men develop this particular defect before—protective instinct misapplied, territoriality where no territory has been established. I’ve alwaysconsidered it a vulnerability that competent men train out of themselves.

Trouble is, I’m not sure how to do that at the moment.

I want to ask her about the scar. The question is the kind of inquiry that establishes intimacy through vulnerability. I’ve used this technique before, with women who wanted to feel seen, who mistook my attention for emotional availability. It would be easy to pry the answer from her, feign some level of connection between us.

But I look at the photograph and imagine the conversation—the deflection, the careful framing, the decision of whether to tell the truth or manufacture something easier. I imagine her face closing, the way faces close when old wounds are touched by new hands.

Discussing trauma like that is hard. Would satisfying my curiosity be worth what the answer would cost her? I doubt it. Moreover, I don’t want to dredge that kind of thing out of her.

I close the folder and open the second file, which contains the week’s intelligence on Hugo’s network. Four new contacts since the honeymoon. Two of them men I’ve been watching for months. The information should command my full attention.

I read three pages. I retain nothing.

Here’s what interests me more than the wound. Every woman I’ve ever known with a visible scar manages it—concealer, framing, the practiced angle in photographs. The strategy is reasonable. The world taxes visible damage, and women pay the highest rate for having the gall to wear a scar in public. It’s unfair, but that’s how the world works.

The scar is what gave her the intriguing white streak of hair, and she hides neither. Luna curls her hair fetchingly to highlight it, not hide it.

At the wedding, the curled white streak was deliberately set against her temple. She took the worst thing that ever happened to her face and made it the first thing you remember about her.

That takes a kind of courage I rarely find.

I have spent thirty years teaching men the only unbeatable position is the one where your weakness is already public, and a candle maker from the south side arrived at it alone, in a mirror, with a curling iron of her own choosing. The scar suits her. She knows it suits her. Both facts are damaging my concentration.

Darya comes through at six to take the coffee tray and reads my desk the way she reads everything, without permission. The folder, the florist’s card, the tailor’s confirmation for Friday.

“Flowers,” she says. “For the gala woman.”

“And?”

“Mm.” She stacks the cup on the tray with the saucer aligned, her version of a closing argument. “Your two o’clock sent another package,” she says, and sets a florist’s card beside the coffee. “They called twice to confirm delivery. I told them to fuck off.”

I close the folder and slide it to the corner. “Good.”

“Tailor called too. He says the suit is ready. He asked if you want the cuffs at a quarter inch.”

I nod. “Quarter inch.”

Her gray brow arches. “In all the years I have worked for you, you have sent flowers to funerals. Not people.”