Vincent shot him a look that could have frozen boiling water.
Then he looked back at me.
“Privately,” he said.
The darkness in his voice erased the amusement from the room.
“Elena,” I said, standing slowly, “take Lily to the kitchen.”
Lily’s smile disappeared.
“Did I do something bad?”
I glanced at the tiny red heart she had painted on my cheek.
Then I knelt until we were eye level.
“No, piccola,” I said. “You did something no one else was brave enough to do.”
Her fingers touched the painted heart.
“Make you happy?”
The question was so simple that it nearly undid me.
“Yes,” I said quietly. “You made me happy.”
Relief brightened her face.
Elena took Lily’s hand, but the little girl looked back twice as they walked away. Buttons remained in my arms until she suddenly remembered him and hurried back.
“No,” she said, pushing the rabbit against my chest. “He stays.”
Then she followed her mother toward the kitchen.
The moment the door closed behind them, Vincent placed a photograph on the table.
My amusement vanished.
The photograph had been taken outside a courthouse. Elena stood near the steps, thinner and younger, holding a newborn baby wrapped in a pale blanket.
Lily.
Beside her stood a man wearing a dark baseball cap.
His face was turned partly away from the camera, but I knew the angle of his jaw. I knew the scar above his left eyebrow. I knew the signet ring on his hand.
I had given him that ring on his eighteenth birthday.
My younger brother.
Matteo.
The air left my lungs.
“That picture was taken three years ago,” Vincent said.
I stared at him.
“That’s impossible.”
“I checked twice.”
“Matteo died five years ago.”
“That’s what we were told.”
My hand tightened around the edge of the table.
Matteo had been twenty-eight when his car exploded on a deserted road outside Milwaukee. The police found burned remains inside. Dental records confirmed his identity. I identified the ring recovered from the wreckage.
I buried an empty coffin because there had been almost nothing left to bury.
For five years, I had carried the weight of failing him.
Now his face stared back at me from a courthouse photograph taken two years after his funeral.
“Where did you get this?” I demanded.
“One of our men recognized Elena when she came through the service entrance last week. He couldn’t place her, so he ran her photograph through an old private database.”
Vincent pulled another document from his coat.
“Elena Morales does not exist before three years ago.”
