Roman held the photograph with both hands.

It was a picture of Nora.

Taken from a distance, through a window.

She was sitting at a kitchen table, head bowed, writing something.

Sophie was asleep on the couch behind her, small and curled under a thin blanket.

The date stamp in the corner read fourteen months ago.

Roman turned it over.

On the back, written in ink that had bled slightly into the paper, were six words.

*She is writing to his enemies.*

Roman looked up at his mother.

"What is this?"

"Exactly what it says." Helena's voice had steadied.

"I intercepted a letter.

Nora was making contact with the Marchetti family.

I have the original.

I kept everything."

Nora's hand tightened around Sophie's shoulder.

"That is a lie."

"Is it?" Helena turned to face her fully for the first time.

"You were desperate.

You had no money — or so you believed.

A woman in your position, with access to Roman's child, would have been very valuable to them."

"I never contacted anyone.

I didn't even know where we were half the time because your people kept moving us."

"I moved you for your protection."

"You moved us so we couldn't build a life." Nora's voice broke at the edge.

"Sophie started at four different schools before she turned three.

We slept in two rooms with a broken heater for an entire winter.

You call that protection?"

Helena didn't answer.

Roman set the photograph on the nearest table.

His hand didn't shake, but he placed it very carefully, the way a man does when he is deciding something.

"Marco." He said the name without raising his voice.

The landlord at the edge of the room straightened.

"Come here."

Marco crossed the ballroom slowly.

He was a broad man, thick through the shoulders, and he had the particular stillness of someone who had spent years being paid not to have feelings.

He stopped two meters from Roman and waited.

"How long have you worked for her?"

"Six years."

"And the women?

How long were you assigned to them?"

Marco glanced at Helena.

Just once.

Then back to Roman.

"Three years."

"Did you move them every time they started to settle?"

A pause.

"Yes."

"On whose instruction?"

Another pause.

Longer.

"His answer," Roman said to his mother, "is going to determine whether he walks out of this room or doesn't."

Marco looked at the floor.

"Hers."

Helena's composure cracked — not dramatically, not with tears, but in the small specific way of a person who has just watched their last wall come down.

Her chin dropped a fraction.

Her shoulders followed.

"You don't understand what I was dealing with," she said.

"The Marchetti threat was real.

I had intelligence—"

"Show me the letter," Roman said.

"I don't have it here."

"You said you kept everything."

"It's at the house."

"Then we'll go to the house." Roman picked up his jacket from the back of a nearby chair.

"All of us.

Tonight."

Sophie had been watching from behind Nora's arm, very quiet, the way small children go quiet when they understand that the adults around them are frightened.

She tugged at Roman's sleeve again.

"Daddy," she said.

"Are you angry at Grandma?"

Roman crouched down to her level.

He looked at her for a long moment — at the torn hem of her dress, at the scuff marks on her shoes, at the small shadows under her eyes that had no business being on a three-year-old's face.

"I'm going to fix something," he said.

"That's all."

Sophie considered this.

Then she held out her arms.

Roman picked her up.

Over her shoulder, his eyes found Helena's.

Whatever Helena saw there made her look away first.

Nora watched him hold their daughter and felt something shift in her chest — not forgiveness, not yet, not even close — but something that had been locked for three years moved slightly, like a door that had forgotten it could open.

Then her phone buzzed in her bag.

She pulled it out.

Unknown number.

She almost ignored it.

She didn't.

The message was four words: *Don't trust the letter.*