Maya looked down.
For the first time, she understood that Luca Moretti’s coldness was not emptiness. It was architecture. A fortress built over a grave.
Elena moved toward him. “Luca—”
“Don’t,” he said.
The word was quiet, but final.
A phone rang.
Not Luca’s. Not Elena’s.
Maya looked at the purse still hanging from her shoulder. Her cheap phone buzzed inside, cracked screen glowing.
UNKNOWN NUMBER.
Everyone stared at it.
Luca crossed the room. “Do not answer.”
Maya answered.
“Maya,” Luca snapped.
She put the phone to her ear. “Hello?”
At first there was only static.
Then a man laughed softly.
“Little moon,” he said.
Maya’s blood froze.
Only one person in that room had called her that.
Elena’s face drained of color.
The man continued, his voice smooth and intimate. “I have waited a long time to hear you breathe.”
Maya could not speak.
Luca reached for the phone, but she stepped back.
“Who is this?” she whispered.
“You do not know me yet. But you will.”
Elena grabbed the edge of a chair.
The man sighed. “Tell Luca I still admire his taste in cages. Tell Elena she should have stayed dead. And tell my daughter that I am coming to bring her home.”
The line went dead.
Maya lowered the phone.
The room did not move.
“My father,” she said.
Elena shook her head once. A tiny, desperate movement. “No.”
Luca’s face had become stone.
Maya looked between them. “Who was that?”
Elena pressed both hands over her mouth.
Luca answered.
“Adrian Vale.”
Maya’s voice came out thin. “Vale?”
Elena whispered, “Your father.”
Maya took a step back. “My father died before I was born.”
“No,” Luca said. “Your father was erased before you could remember him.”
Maya’s heart pounded so hard she felt sick. “What is he?”
Elena looked at her with the expression of someone watching a knife fall in slow motion.
“He was the Black Table’s collector,” she said. “The man they sent when someone owed a debt that money could not pay.”
Maya remembered every unpaid bill in her apartment. Every night she had gone hungry. Every time she had wondered what kind of man had left her mother alone.
“My father is a killer.”