Chapter 4
Chapter Four
Maya
After browsing the study and discovering several intriguing pieces of information that are all too easily located, I fall asleep in Stefano Savarese’s chair for forty-three minutes with my own file open in my lap and a letter opener tucked beneath my thigh.
Sleeping in a mafia don’s study is not a tactical decision I would recommend, but the body has strong opinions after drugs, a raid, a fight, and whatever other disastrous moments I’ve forgotten from the night before.
One moment, I’m reading a redacted FBI report about myself, irritated by how much of Stefano’s file covers it, and the next, I wake to the sound of someone clearing his throat in the doorway.
I open my eyes without moving, assessing the newcomer. Omar Strada stands just inside the study, one shoulder against the frame, arms crossed over his chest. He has changed clothes since I last saw him down the barrel of a gun outside the helicopter, but not his expression. Dark eyes. Hard mouth.
“You sleep badly,” he says without an ounce of humor.
“You kidnap badly,” I retort, half asleep.
His eyes move to the letter opener half-hidden beneath my leg. “Not badly enough, it seems.”
I stand up, stretching slowly, partly because I refuse to look startled and partly because my head punishes speed.
“Where are the children?”
“Eating breakfast.”
That gets me upright faster than my body appreciates. The room tilts once, meanly, then settles. Omar watches the stumble without offering a hand, which is the first thing I have liked about him. I do not need kindness from Stefano’s men. I need honesty, and indifference is at least honest.
“Take me to them.”
“That is why I’m here.”
He turns and walks away, expecting me to follow. Which I do because hating orders does not automatically make ignoring them intelligent.
He glances back. “The Don said you were opinionated.”
“The Don talks about me, does he?”
That earns a scowl. “He currently has a fair share of poor judgment, it seems.”
“Careful. That almost sounded like an independent thought,” I tease.
Omar stops. He simply stops walking, and I skid to a standstill just barely avoiding colliding with him. When he turns, there is no anger on his face, just cold, brutal dislike.
“I don’t like you,” he says.
“The feeling is mutual. I promise.”
“You are FBI, and emotionally attached to two children who became valuable to us the moment Leon lost them. Every piece of you is a complication, and my job is to remove complications before they become threats.”
I lift a hand over my heart dramatically. “Are you practicing your proposal? Cause it needs work.”
His gaze drops to it. “If you cause problems for him, I will remove you from the equation.”
There is nothing theatrical in the threat. No raised voice. No step forward. He doesn’t need to. Omar delivers it the way another man might deliver a weather report. Practical. Certain. Detached from whether I like the prediction or not.
“That would be inconvenient for your Don’s five-day plan.”
“Plans change.”
“So do equations.” I step closer because men who expect women to shrink before them hate it when they don’t. “And if you ever use Erin and Heath as numbers in front of me again, I’ll show you exactly how much of a threat I can be.”
For the first time, his lips twitch, just barely. It’s not respect. Not acknowledgment. But it’s something. And I’ll take it.
“Breakfast,” he says. Then he turns and keeps walking.
The room he leads me to is smaller than the formal dining room I passed earlier, which means it only seats sixteen instead of hosting a small government.
Morning light fills the space through tall windows overlooking a lawn too green to be natural.
One end of the table has been set with plates, juice, coffee, eggs, toast, and fruit cut into careful pieces.
A perfectly civilized meal inside a house where civilization feels like an expensive costume.
Erin sits on the edge of her chair with one knee tucked beneath her, hair brushed but not well, as if someone attempted it and lost the battle early.
She has a piece of toast in both hands and strawberry jam on the corner of her mouth.
Heath sits beside her, smaller than I remember from the chaos of last night and somehow older.
His plate is untouched except for one bite of egg.
His chair is angled slightly toward his sister.
Even here, even at breakfast, he has placed himself between her and the rest of the world.
I stop in the doorway. They are alive. Clean.
Dressed in clothes that fit, though the tags have been cut recently, and one of Heath’s sleeves still has a fold from packaging.
No visible bruising. No restraints. No men looming over them.
Just two children at a breakfast table in a mafia don’s house, which means the bar for relief has apparently fallen through the floor.
Erin sees me first. Her eyes widen. “You’re awake.”
Heath’s head turns immediately. He does not move. His expression closes before I can read what was there, and that hurts more than it should for a child who has every reason not to trust me.
“I am,” I say with a warm smile.
Erin looks at Omar, then back to me. “Are you allowed to be here?”
“Omar and I are still discussing the definition of allowed.”
Omar makes a sound behind me that could be amusement if he had more personality. Erin’s mouth twitches in a smile around the toast. Heath’s attention sharpens.
I sit on the floor instead of taking the chair opposite them. Omar’s eyebrow shifts. Erin leans forward, looking down at me.
“Why are you sitting there?”
“Because I’m tired of chairs.”
“That’s weird,” she says before taking another bite of toast.
That makes me laugh. “A lot of things are weird right now.”
She considers this and accepts it with a small nod. Heath’s gaze stays on me, guarded and flat in a way no eight-year-old should be. I make a point to keep my hands visible in my lap.
“My name is Maya,” I say.
Erin says, “You yelled at Mr. Omar.”
“It was more of a conversation.”
“It sounded like yelling to me,” Heath interjects.
“Consider me a passionate person.”
His eyes narrow. “Who are you?”
There it is. No soft lead-in. No childlike curiosity. Just the question that matters, delivered with the seriousness of someone who has learned that adults often use names as disguises.
I look at him because he deserves the answer directly. “I’m your mother’s sister. Your Aunt Maya.”
The room goes still. Erin’s toast lowers to her plate. Heath doesn’t move at all. Omar, still loitering behind me, becomes more silent than before.
“My mom didn’t have a sister,” Heath says.
“Yes, she did.”
“No.”
“She did,” I say, gently but without making it sound like a question. “She didn’t get to talk about me much. Maybe not at all. But I knew about you. Both of you.”
Erin’s face changes first, the way open faces do. Hope starts before caution can stop it, then falters because hope is risky, and she has been taught that risk hurts.
“You knew our names?” she asks.
“Yes.”
“How?”
“Your mom sent me pictures when she could.” I reach slowly into the pocket of the robe, then stop when Omar stiffens. “It’s just a photo.”
“Show me,” Heath says.
I take it out with two fingers. It is creased from being folded inside my undercover bag for months, then tucked into the lining of the ugly dress before the auction.
I should not have brought it into the operation.
Any handler would have told me carrying personal evidence into an undercover assignment was reckless, sentimental, stupid.
I did it anyway. Some rules do not survive grief. I slide the photograph across the floor instead of standing.
Heath gets down from his chair before Erin can grab it. He picks it up, keeping his body angled so he can see both me and the door. In the picture, the twins are maybe six. Erin is missing a front tooth. Heath has one arm around her shoulders and a suspicious look aimed at whoever held the camera.
Alice’s note is on the back: Erin and Heath. Don’t laugh at his face. He was mad because Erin picked the blue shirt first.
Heath turns the photo over and reads the note. Erin slips from her chair and presses against his side to see it. “That’s Mom’s writing.”
I swallow once. “Yes.”
“You knew her?” Erin asks.
“She was my sister.”
Heath looks up. “Then why weren’t you there?”
It is not an accusation. It’s worse. It is a fair question.
I could give him the adult answer. The family answer.
The mafia answer. The legal answer. I could tell him Alice chose to go back, that Leon controlled access, that my career put distance between us and danger around us, that every attempt to reach her had to be weighed against whether it would make things worse for her.
But none of that belongs on a child’s plate.
“I tried to be,” I say. “But I wasn’t close enough.”
His jaw tightens.
Erin turns the picture over again, touching her mother’s handwriting with one finger. “She’s dead, isn’t she?”
Omar looks toward the window. I hate him a little less for it.
“Yes,” I say.
Erin nods as if I have confirmed what she already knew, but her eyes fill anyway. Heath hands her the picture and climbs back into his chair with careful control. He does not cry. That worries me more than tears would have.
“Dad said she left,” Erin whispers.
“He lied.”
Heath looks at me then, sharp and sudden. There is no surprise on his face. “I knew it.”
The three words are too flat for a child. I want to reach for him. But I refrain.
“I’m sorry,” I say.
He looks away. “People say that when they can’t fix something.”
“They do,” I agree.
“Can you fix this?”
I think of Stefano’s file. Leon’s name. Five days. The deal I have made because the alternative is failing them a second time.
“I can’t bring her back,” I say. “But I can be there for you. Once I take care of a few things.”
Erin wipes her face with the sleeve of her new shirt. “Are we going back to Dad?”
“No.”