Rosa POVRaffaele arranged it for the next evening, a quiet café on the edge of the city that his people owned, somewhere neutral and controlled with two exits and sightlines he could manage. He told me he would be close but not in the room and I told him I didn't want him in the room, I needed to do this alone, and he looked at me for a long moment and then he nodded and I saw something in his face that might have been pride or might have been fear or might have been both.Mateo was already there when I arrived, sitting at a table near the back with a cup of coffee in front of him that he wasn't drinking. He looked up when I walked in and his face did something complicated, something that wasn't quite guilt and wasn't quite relief and wasn't quite anything except tired and scared and maybe, underneath all of that, a little bit glad to see me.I sat down across from him and I didn't order anything and I didn't take my jacket off because I wasn't planning to stay long."Rosa," he said,
Read more