CHAPTER 14: WHAT TOMAS KNEW

The secure location was a nondescript house in a quiet residential neighborhood that Aria would never have suspected belonged to anything but an ordinary family, which she understood was precisely the point.

Tomas Reyes sat at a kitchen table that could have belonged in any home in the city, his hands folded in front of him, his face the particular grey of a man who had not slept and did not expect to again for some time. He was younger than she had imagined, perhaps thirty, with the kind of tired, decent face that made the whole situation feel even more like a tragedy than a betrayal.

He looked up when she entered with Damien and Marco, and something in his expression broke slightly at the sight of her, an unguarded flicker of shame.

You're the nanny, he said. He glanced at Damien. I heard about you. The boy talks now.

He does, Aria said. She sat down across from him without being invited to, which she registered Damien noting but not stopping.

Tell me about your sister, she said.

Tomas blinked, clearly having expected something else.

Her name is Marisol, he said, after a pause. She's twenty-six. She has a kind of leukemia that responds to treatment but the treatment costs more than I make in two years. I've been paying what I can. It's never enough. I thought, if I just gave them one piece of information, just one, that would be the end of it.

And then they asked for a second piece, Aria said.

Tomas's hands tightened on the table.

Yes.

And you gave it to them.

I gave them an address, he said. I told myself it was just an address. I told myself nobody would get hurt from an address. He looked up at her, and his eyes were wet. I know that's not true. I knew it when I made the call. I just couldn't think of another way to keep paying for her treatment.

Aria looked at Damien, who stood near the door with his arms crossed, his face unreadable, watching this unfold with the patience of a man waiting to see what conclusion the conversation reached before he decided whether to honor it.

She looked back at Tomas.

Did Carrow's people ever ask you for anything else? she said. Beyond locations. Did they ask about me specifically? About Luca?

Tomas was quiet for a moment, and something in his hesitation made the room go very still.

They asked, he said finally, whether the boy still doesn't speak.

Aria felt cold move through her.

What did you tell them?

I told them I didn't know, Tomas said. Because I didn't, not for certain, not until recently. But I'd heard things. Staff talk. Marco's people talk. I think they wanted to know whether he'd be useful.

Useful, Damien repeated, his voice gone very quiet, very dangerous.

As leverage, Tomas said miserably. If the boy started talking, started remembering things, identifying people from the night his mother died. I think Carrow wanted to know if there was a child witness he needed to worry about, or use.

The room held the kind of silence that follows the dropping of something irreplaceable.

Aria's mind went immediately, helplessly, to Luca, four years old, asleep two states away in his moon-lit room, drawing pianos and saying single careful words to the people he had decided to trust. The thought of him as a target, as a piece on someone else's board, made something in her chest go sharp and protective and entirely unwilling to be calm.

Damien's voice, when he spoke, had a quality that made even Marco shift his weight.

Is my son in danger, he said. Right now. Today.

Tomas looked genuinely frightened for the first time since they'd arrived.

I don't know, he said. I swear I don't know. I only ever told them locations and schedules. I never told them anything about the boy specifically. I don't think they have anyone inside who would know more than what staff gossip already says.

Damien looked at Marco.

Audit everyone, he said. Every staff member, every guard, every driver. I want to know who's been talking and what they've been saying, starting today.

Marco nodded once and left the room.

Damien turned back to Tomas, and Aria watched something settle in him, a decision crystallizing behind his eyes.

She spoke before he could.

He didn't know what they wanted it for, she said. He thought he was buying his sister's life with addresses. He didn't understand he was buying it with my son's safety.

Tomas flinched at the word son, the accusation embedded in it landing exactly where she'd intended.

Damien looked at her, then at Tomas, for a long moment.

Then he said, quietly: You're going to disappear. Not the way you're imagining. A new identity, a new city, your sister relocated with you under a name that has no connection to anything that's happened here. You'll never work in this world again. You'll never speak to anyone connected to it again, including, eventually, the people in this room.

Tomas stared at him.

You're letting me live, he said.

I'm letting you disappear, Damien said. There's a difference. If I ever hear your name again, in any context, the mercy ends. Do you understand me?

Tomas nodded, too overwhelmed to speak.

Damien looked at Aria.

This is the last time, he said, quiet enough that only she could hear it. The last time I let your judgment override mine on something this serious. Not because you were wrong. Because I can't keep discovering that I trust you more than I trust my own instincts, not in the middle of a war.

She held his gaze.

Maybe your instincts and my judgment aren't as different as you think, she said.

Something moved behind his eyes, something that looked, for just a moment, like the early architecture of surrender.

He didn't answer. He simply held the door for her as they left, and his hand found the small of her back as they walked to the car, brief and barely there and entirely unprecedented, and neither of them mentioned it, and neither of them moved away from it either.