Page 44 of Reckless

Sin smiles at his mother as he takes the parcel. “Thanks… I didn’t think you’d still have anything from when I was a baby?”

Maria reaches out and grips his arm, her eyes lighting up. “I have a lot. I’d like to show you sometime.”

Sin dips his head. “I’d like that. Now come meet your grandson.”

Maria inhales sharply and lowers herself onto the sofa as if she’s afraid one hurried movement might disturb the moment.

Victoria eases Marcus into her arms, and for a heartbeat, Maria stares at him, like she can’t quite believe he’s real. Her thumb brushes lightly over the edge of the blanket before settling against his tiny back. Marcus sighs in his sleep and curls a little closer, perfectly content to be wherever the warmth is.

Something shifts across Maria’s face, gone almost as quickly as it arrives. Her eyes shine, though she doesn’t seem to notice. Nobody says a word, the whole room giving her the silence instead.

Sin has drifted over to the window, close enough to Victoria that they don’t have to reach far for each other. She rests her fingers against the inside of his wrist. Without looking down, he turns his hand over and holds on.

I drop my gaze, suddenly feeling as though I’m standing in the middle of something that belongs to their family, not me.

When I look back up, Ghost is watching me.

Not with curiosity, just that steady look that somehow tells me he gets it.

It’s only for a second, but it’s long enough for my stomach to do that annoying little twist it’s been doing around him lately.

Then he looks back to Maria, and the moment slips quietly back into the room.

Twenty minutes disappear without anybody paying much attention to the clock. Marcus sleeps through all of it. Fair play to him. Maria barely moves. Now and then her thumb brushes across his tiny knuckles before settling again, like she’s reassuring herself he’s real.

I wonder how many times she’s imagined this.

How many times she convinced herself she’d never get it.

Holding her grandson, standing in her son’s clubhouse, being welcomed instead of tolerated.

She doesn’t say much because some things are written all over a person’s face if you’re paying attention.

I look away before it starts feeling like I’m reading something that wasn’t meant for me.

“Thank you,” Maria says. Not just for the baby, but for the whole morning. For the welcome that didn’t have to be a welcome.

Victoria meets her eyes and gives her a small nod. Maria nods back. Whatever passes between them belongs to them.

Maria hands Marcus back with the same care she picked him up with, smoothing one finger over his cheek before she lets go, then she turns to Sin. They stand there for a second, but neither of them says much.

He opens the front door for her, and Maria steps toward it before stopping halfway across the threshold. She turns, and her eyes find me. I’m still on the sofa, having not moved for the past hour, and I am aware of how obvious that probably is.

“Sage.” She says my name like she already knows it, which I suppose she does. Maria Moretti is a chief with connections and a thorough habit of doing her research.

She knows who I am.

She knows about Unsilenced.

She knows the work.

“Chief?” I stand because it feels right to.

She takes a few steps back into the room, not all the way, just enough to be closer to me without making it a thing. “The group home inquiry,” she says, and her voice has shifted slightly, taking on something more deliberate. “I’ve been watching the work you’re doing…” She pauses, and what comes after isn’t quite a statement. “It matters.”

“It does,” I agree.

She holds my gaze for a second longer than most people would. Long enough that I have the odd feeling she’s weighing something up—I’ve seen that look before. Detectives wear it, and journalists do too. It’s the look people get when they know more than they’re ready to put into words, when they’re turning a conversation over in their head before deciding whether this is the moment to have it.