Page 154 of Merciless Daddy

“It’s not what you think,” she said.

“I said nothing.”

“Yes but you thought several things.”

“I thought you’d chosen them because they were strategically intimidating.”

She laughed. “That is exactly the sort of lie Pietro would tell.”

She sat on the rug opposite me and opened her own coloring book. Not beside mine. Opposite. Enough space to make it clear she had not come to inspect me.

For several minutes, we colored in silence.

Angela selected a green pen and began filling in leaves around a small house.

“You’re making the firebird black,” she said eventually.

“He’s in mourning.”

“Poor little guy.”

Her hands were steady. Her nails were short and unpainted. A faint pale line crossed one knuckle. I had seen those hands move over financial records with surgical precision. I had watched her find the hidden bones inside Gianni’s accounts.

Now she was adding tiny pink flowers to a hedge.

I looked at her again.

“Do you do this often?”

“Color?”

“This.”

She knew what I meant.

Angela capped the green pen. “Sometimes. Helps me . . be me.”

“Pietro lets you?”

Her eyes came up to mine. Not offended. Just clear.

“Pietro doesn’t let me do anything.”

I flushed. “That came out wrong.”

“I know you dindn’t mean it badly.” She picked up a purple pen. “He takes care of me when I ask him to. Sometimes before I ask, which is irritating. But I’m still the person who decides whether an offshore structure is a fraud or merely ugly.”

“Mostly ugly.”

“Usually ugly.”

I looked down at my black bird.

“Does it make you feel less . . .” I searched for the word. “Capable?”

“No.” Angela’s voice stayed soft. “It makes me capable of continuing.”

The room was quiet except for pencils moving over paper.