11. Sofia
SOFIA
The coroner’s office had turned out to be a dead end.
Literally and figuratively.
There is probably a joke in there somewhere, something dry and horrible enough that Matteo would have whispered it under his breath if he were here, then immediately apologized when I stared at him too long.
Two metal slabs under harsh fluorescent lights had revealed the bodies of the two assailants, laid out for us like forgotten props in a play no one wanted to finish.
Their pale skin had been stitched closed with neat black thread, the brutality of their final moments turned tidy by trained hands.
Neither of them had any hidden tattoos that could point us toward a specific gang affiliation or symbols tucked beneath hairlines.
Rowan had checked them with a cold, practiced eye, his gloved hands moving with careful efficiency as the coroner hovered nearby looking as if he regretted every decision that brought him to this room.
But there had been nothing.
My mother’s own case was hardly any different.
The coroner had only able to recall the accident vaguely, and whatever reports he did still have a hard copy of that had been left to collect dust in his filing cabinet show the same inconclusive reports the police had already filed—ballistics consistent with a close-range attack, no fingerprints found on the weapon or inside the vehicle and no DNA hits in any database.
By the time we’d thanked the coroner and walked out the front doors, Rowan’s frustration had been rolling off him in waves, and I can’t say I feel differently.
Disappointment sits heavily in my stomach, dense and sour.
I wanted more, just like he did. I wanted the coroner to take one look at me and break open with confession after confession until I had a name and a person to blame.
Instead, we found the opposite.
A dead end.
Yet at the same time, I refuse to let that disappointment win. We are moving in some sort of direction. That at least is something. A month ago, my mother died in a car accident because everyone told me so. Now I have a file in my hands that says otherwise.
I collapse back into the passenger seat when we climb back into the SUV and hold back an audible sigh.
The interior smells faintly of worn leather and Rowan.
That last part irritates me because I notice it immediately.
It has become stupidly familiar in such a short time, and I hate that sitting beside him now feels more stable than being alone in my own room at the estate does.
My eyes drop to my lap where my mother’s case file rests. My fingers trace the edge of the file before flipping it open, and I roam over the first page again and again.
Rowan had talked the coroner into giving it to us.
Though, maybe “talking” is too generous a word.
I suppose I should have been scared to see him intimidate and threaten an old man well past his retirement age into giving us such sensitive pieces of information.
Maybe a better woman would have been. But all I had felt was a sense of fleeting excitement when the paperwork was passed over to me.
For most of my life, my mother’s death has been an enormous weight following me everywhere, its shadow stretching long enough to chase me across continents. Now it’s a case file sitting in my lap.
Rowan is quiet next to me. He sits behind the wheel with both hands resting there, not yet starting the engine.
His profile is cut by the gray light filtering in through the windshield.
Rowan’s silence at the estate is a wall meant to keep me from digging too deeply.
Here, it feels like a door he is holding shut with both hands because he is desperate to not let me in to see what’s on the other side.
Instead of speaking, I shift the file into his lap and rearrange my limbs until my back is pressed up against the door. The file settles across his thighs, the pale yellow stark against the black of his pants.
His eyes snap away from the windshield to look at the file before finding mine. He holds me there for a long second, silently daring me to look away. I don’t, though. I want him to know I’m choosing to trust him with this.
So I shrug, pushing the burning in my veins back down so I can breathe again. “Better to have two eyes on it than one. Maybe you can find something else I haven’t been able to.”
For a moment, he doesn’t move.
A tiny part of me feels guilty for putting him in a position like this.
The larger part of me refuses to apologize, however.
I had no hand in twisting his arm. Rowan made his choice all on his own.
He called my uncle, heard the order on the other end of the phone, lied to me about it, and kept driving anyway.
Whatever he wants to call it now, obedience is no longer the correct answer.
Slowly, almost reluctantly, Rowan lifts one hand from the steering wheel and places it on the folder.
His fingers spread over the worn surface, hooking around the edge of it to pull it closer.
His eyes scan the page in front of him, lifting it a few moments later to turn to the next one, and the one after that.
He pauses when he reaches one of the last few pages toward the back, his body suddenly going still.
“What?” I ask.
“The gun that was found at your mother’s crime scene… it’s similar to the ones that were used during your uncle’s assassination attempt,” he murmurs.
I blink, leaning quickly across the center console to look at the page in his lap. “How do you know?”
His fingers trace the photo of the gun taken at the crime scene nearly twenty years ago. The image is grainy, slightly washed out from age and bad photocopying, but the weapon is still clear enough beneath the harsh flash of old forensic photography to reveal a very obvious missing serial number.
Rowan taps the photo twice. “Parts like these are distributed mainly through mid-tier gangs. They’re known for shifting weapons caches around for the quickest profit turnaround.
Bratvas like ours don’t necessarily deal with that.
We mainly focus on procurement and shipping.
Once they are out of our hands, it’s not our business what is done with them. ”
I stare down at the photo, at the object that had been used to end my mother’s life. There is something obscene about it, that this old, ugly little piece of metal had been capable of stealing a bright light from this world and from me.
I scan the paragraph underneath the photo, searching for something that will either confirm or destroy what he just said. There is nothing but the same general descriptions that have appeared throughout the entirety of the file.
Basic firearm. Recovered at the scene. No viable prints. No confirmed ownership. Ballistic trauma consistent with close-range discharge.
The clinical language reveals nothing new.
I shift against the door behind me. “There was no DNA evidence linking it to anyone specific. How can you be sure the gun used to kill my mother is the same variety as my uncle’s?”
“There was no DNA hit in the database,” he corrects. “Not the same thing as having no evidence.”
My eyes shoot up to meet his.
He continues, “All I’m saying is that there is a good possibility one answer will lead to another. I’m not familiar with the local gangs in the area that the Kuznetsovs don’t personally do business with. But I know where we can find them to get answers.”
For a moment, I can only stare at him. Then, I feel a slow smile start to tug at my lips.
After years of questions, after weeks of being told no, maybe I finally have a trail to follow.