Mia POV
I won Elena over with a plant.
It is not a strategy exactly; it starts as an observation. On day five, I notice the small pot on the kitchen windowsill, a basil plant that is yellowing at the edges and drooping in the middle, the specific droop of something that has been watered too much and drained too little. Someone put it there because they wanted it to grow, and then loved it wrong.
I wait until Elena is nearby and I say, without making it a big thing: "The basil needs less water and more sun. The windowsill is too shaded. If you move it to the breakfast room, it'll recover in about a week."
She looks at the plant. She looks at me.
She says nothing.
The next morning, the basil is in the breakfast room.
Two days after that, Elena sets my coffee down, and instead of walking straight back to the kitchen, she pauses and says: "It's already greener." Like we are continuing a conversation. Like we have been talking this whole time, and this is just the next sentence.
I say, "It will keep going if you let the soil dry completely between watering."
She nods. She goes back to the kitchen.
This is how you win someone like Elena. Not with charm, she has seen enough charm to be immune to it. You win her with something real. Something useful. Something that says I see what you are trying to do, and I know how to help you do it better without making her feel small for not knowing.
By day seven, she does not walk quite so quickly past my door.
By day nine, she leaves it two seconds longer than necessary when she brings my morning tray, which is enough time for a small folded piece of paper to move from her hand to mine without anyone watching, seeing anything but a woman setting down a coffee cup.
Three words in Rosa's handwriting.
I'm looking. Careful.
I read it four times. Then I fold it smaller than small and press it into the seam of my pillowcase, where the stitching has come slightly loose at one end, a hiding place I prepared on day three because I knew eventually I would need one.
I'm looking. Careful.
That is Rosa in six letters. No panic, no paragraphs of fear, no wasted words. Just the two things I needed to know: she received my message, and she is being smart about it. The care is for me as much as for her. She is telling me she knows this is dangerous. She is telling me she is not going to do anything that gets either of us hurt.
I press my hand flat over the pillowcase for a moment.
For the first time in nine days, I do not feel like the only person on my side of this.
It is a small feeling. Fragile. But I hold onto it the way you hold onto a railing in the dark, not because it takes your weight, but because it tells you where the edge is.
I spent the morning in the library.
Not reading. Performing reading, which is a specific and different skill. Performing reading means holding a book at the right angle, turning pages at intervals that suggest comprehension, and keeping your eyes moving across the lines while your actual attention is somewhere else entirely.
My actual attention is on the hallway.
Specifically, on the open door of the study three doors down from the library, which is open today in a way it has not been open before. Not wide, maybe forty degrees, enough to suggest someone stepped out and will be back shortly. Enough that from the right position in my library chair, I can see a partial angle of the desk inside.
I move my chair.
Not dramatically. I pick up my book and my coffee, and I shift to the chair closer to the window, completely reasonable, the light is better there, and from this new angle, the open study door resolves into a view I did not have before.
The desk is covered in organized stacks. Folders, each one labeled in the same tight dark handwriting from the library book margins. From this distance, I cannot read them all clearly; some are at the wrong angle, some are stacked face-down, some I can only see the edge of.
I turn a page.
I start at the left side of the desk, and I work right, reading every label I can see and storing each one as a data point without letting my eyes stop moving from the book in my hands.
Operations label I don't recognize. A city name somewhere south. A date from six months ago. Financial codes that mean nothing to me yet. Another city. A person's name I file away. Another code.
I turn another page.
Work right. Keep the eyes moving. Don't stop on anything long enough to look like you are looking.
Three more folders I can partially read. Two, I cannot. One turned face-up at an angle that gives me the full label clearly.
I turn a page.
I turn another page.
And then a folder near the back right corner of the desk, slightly separated from the others, like it was set aside rather than filed, face-up, fully visible from exactly this angle.
Three letters on the tab.
V.C.
I turn a page.
I look at the words in the book I am not reading.
V.C.
Victor Cole.
My father's initials on a folder on Dante Reyes's desk, separated from the other files, set aside the way you set something aside when you are not done with it. When you are still thinking about it. When whatever is inside it is still an open question.
I turn a page.
My hands are completely steady, and that steadiness costs me everything I have right now because every single part of me wants to stand up and walk down that hall and open that folder and read every word inside it with my back against the wall and my heart in my throat.
I do not do that.
I sit in my chair, and I hold my book, and I breathe in for four counts and out for four counts, and I add V.C. to the mental list I have been building since day one, the list I write nowhere, carry nowhere, keep in the only place in this house that is entirely mine.
My mind.
The folder is there. My father's initials on Dante's desk. Set aside. Not finished with.
Which means Dante is not finished with it either.
Which means something about my father is still an open question in this house.
I need to know what question.
I turn a page.
I keep reading the book I am not reading.
And I think: Elena.
I need to get back to Elena.