Novels by Naj

ETHAN’s POVBrahms drove a toy car across my knee."Attention..." he whispered."C'est un tunnel." “It's a tunnel.”"My leg?"He nodded.Then the car launched off my knee and landed on the carpet with a dramatic explosion only he could hear."Boom."I looked down at him."I think everyone survived.""Non." “No.”He picked up the blue car."Il est mort." “He's dead.”Abby appeared from the kitchen carrying a bowl of apple slices."I don't know where he gets this imagination."Lucia looked up from the notebook."I do."Abby ignored her.Brahms accepted an apple slice before returning immediately to his rescue mission.For a minute, none of us spoke.The apartment felt... ordinary.There was a cartoon playing softly in the background. Someone upstairs dragged furniture across the floor. Abby had left the kettle on again because it clicked off by itself every few minutes.Life kept happening around us.I picked up the bag of brake parts.Lucia watched me."So?""So..."I turned one of

ETHAN’s POVBrahms had grown heavier.Not by much.Just enough that I noticed it when I lifted him off the floor.“Tu as mangé des briques?” I asked into his hair."Have you been eating bricks?"He giggled.“Non. Des crêpes.” “No Pancakes."“That explains it.”He nodded with the seriousness of someone who had solved the problem completely.I smiled before I remembered where I was.The smile stayed.It just became harder to hold.“Tu m’as manqué?” he whispered."Did you miss me?"I looked at him.“Tous les jours.”"Every day."His arms tightened around my neck.Behind him, Abby picked up an empty cup from the table and carried it into the kitchen, although I was fairly certain it had been empty when she brought it out. Lucia followed her with the same lack of subtlety.Isabella stayed where she was.A few feet away.Arms folded.Still wearing her ring.I tried not to look at it again.Brahms leaned back far enough to study my face.“Tu rentres à la maison?”"Are you coming home?"The

ISABELLA’s POVThe key stuck twice before the lock finally turned.Lucia pulled it out, frowned at it, then tried again as though the key had personally offended her.“You want me to do it?”“No.”“You’ve been fighting with it for almost a minute.”“I said no.”The lock clicked.Lucia pushed the metal door upward and gave me a look that said she had meant to do that all along.The storage unit was smaller than I expected. Three boxes, a shelf, an old red toolbox and four tyres stacked in the corner. That was it.Lucia stepped inside first.“Well,” she said, looking around. “This is underwhelming.”“What were you expecting?”“A body.”I stared at her.“I’m joking.”“You need better jokes.”“I’ve been under pressure.”There was hardly enough room for both of us, so I stayed near the entrance while Lucia opened the nearest box. Dust lifted into the air. She coughed, waved it away and immediately started going through the contents.Invoices.Repair manuals.A rolled-up calendar from six y

LUCIA’S POVBy the time Isabella and I left the apartment, the rain had started properly.Not the light mist that disappeared before touching the ground. This one struck the windshield hard enough to blur the cars ahead of us, and the wipers struggled to keep up. Isabella sat beside me with Claire’s file pressed against her stomach as though someone might try to take it from her.For the first ten minutes, she said nothing.I didn’t push her.She had spent most of the morning reading documents that suggested her mother’s death had been arranged, that Marcus might be connected to it, and that Ethan had known enough to investigate without telling her. There was no useful question I could ask that would make any of that easier.Marco had given me an address in Queens. It belonged to Eleanor Briggs, the sister of the mechanic named in the report. He hadn’t found the mechanic himself. Michael Briggs had disappeared from every database he checked shortly after Claire’s death, but his sister

LUCIA’S POVBy the time I returned to the dining room, Isabella had arranged every page from the file in neat rows across the table.The bank transfers were on one side. The police reports sat in the middle. Ethan’s handwritten notes had been separated from everything else and placed closest to her.Brahms was still asleep on the couch, one hand tucked beneath his cheek. Abby had moved to the armchair beside him and was pretending to read, though her eyes lifted the moment I entered.Isabella looked at me.“What did Marco find?”I closed the apartment door behind me and crossed the room.“More than I expected.”She pushed her laptop aside. “That doesn’t sound good.”“It isn’t good or bad yet. It’s incomplete.”Her expression tightened. She was losing patience with incomplete answers.I understood.I placed my phone on the table and opened the notes I had taken during the call. Marco had sent a set of corporate registrations, historical banking records and ownership changes connected t

ETHAN’S POVThe front door clicked shut.Ethan didn’t move.For a long moment, he kept looking at the place where Isabella had been standing, as though she might walk back in and tell him she’d forgotten something.She didn’t.The silence settled slowly.He let out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding and loosened his tie. It suddenly felt too tight around his neck.His eyes wandered through the apartment almost on instinct.Brahms’ backpack was gone.So were the tiny sneakers that usually sat crookedly beside the entrance no matter how many times Abby lined them up.He hadn’t noticed Isabella taking them.He noticed they were missing now.He walked into the living room.One of Brahms’ building blocks had rolled beneath the coffee table. Ethan bent to pick it up, turning the small blue cube over between his fingers before setting it back where he’d found it.Tomorrow.The thought came without invitation.Tomorrow they’d build another castle.He stopped.There might not be a t