Chapter 4: What Leo Knows
The room they gave me was on the third floor of a building I hadn't known existed behind Lumina's service entrance.
It wasn't a cell.
That was the first thing I checked — the door handle turned from the inside, the window overlooked a private courtyard rather than a sheer drop, and the bed had actual pillows.
Someone had left a glass of water and a small orange prescription bottle on the nightstand.
The label read *Sara Malone* in printed type, which meant Marco had given my name to a pharmacist at some point in the last forty minutes, which meant he had resources I couldn't begin to map.
I sat on the edge of the bed and stared at the unknown number on my phone.
*We need to talk.
Tonight.*
I typed back: *Who is this?*
Three dots appeared.
Then disappeared.
Then appeared again.
*Chloe.
The tray.
I'm so sorry.
Please don't tell him it was my fault.*
I exhaled slowly.
Chloe.
The other server.
The one whose shoe had caught the brass strip.
*Are you all right?* I typed.
*They questioned me for an hour.
I told them it was an accident.
It WAS an accident.
Sara, are you okay?
Where are you?
Julian said they took you to a back room and nobody's seen you since.*
I looked at the bandage on my shoulder.
At the orange prescription bottle.
At the door that opened from the inside.
*I'm fine,* I typed.
*Don't worry.
Don't say anything to anyone.*
I set the phone face-down on the nightstand and lay back carefully on my good side.
I did not sleep.
At some point past midnight, I heard footsteps in the corridor — light ones, uneven, the shuffle of small feet that weren't trying to be quiet because they didn't yet understand that the world required it.
Then a soft knock, barely a knock at all, more like a question asked with knuckles.
I sat up.
"Come in," I said, because what else do you say when a six-year-old knocks on your door at midnight?
Leo opened it.
He was wearing pajamas printed with small green dinosaurs.
He was holding the plastic dinosaur from the restaurant — the one that had frozen mid-roar when the glasses fell.
He looked at me with his father's eyes, dark and direct, but without any of the weight his father carried behind them.
"You're still here," he said.
It wasn't surprise.
It was satisfaction.
"I'm still here."
He walked in and climbed onto the chair beside the bed with the practiced ease of a child who had spent time in rooms that weren't designed for children.
He set the dinosaur on his knee.
"Does your back still hurt?"
"A little."
"Papa said you were very brave."
"Your papa was being kind."
Leo considered this seriously.
"Papa isn't kind very often," he said.
"So when he is, it means he really means it."
I didn't know what to do with that, so I said nothing.
Leo held up the dinosaur.
"This is Rex.
He wanted to say thank you.
He was scared when the glasses fell."
"Tell Rex he's welcome."
Leo looked at the dinosaur.
Then back at me.
"He says you're welcome too.
For being there."
My throat did the thing it had done earlier — that sudden tightening that had nothing to do with the shards or the pain or the fear.
"Leo," I said carefully.
"Does your papa know you're here?"
"Nico is outside the door." He said it simply, the way children state facts they've always known.
"He follows me everywhere.
Papa says it's for safety."
"Does Nico know you knocked?"
"He knocked first," Leo said.
"I told him I wanted to check on the flying lady and he said okay." He paused.
"Nico is nicer than Caruso."
"I noticed."
Leo swung his feet gently.
"Why were you at the restaurant?
Do you like it there?"
"I work there."
"Oh." He thought about this.
"Do you like working there?"
"It pays my electric bill."
He nodded as though this were a perfectly reasonable answer, which, to a child who had probably never thought about an electric bill in his life, it apparently was.
"I don't have a mama," he said then, without transition, the way children move between thoughts — directly, without the bridges adults build to protect themselves.
"She went away when I was two.
I don't remember her face.
Only a smell.
Like flowers, but a specific kind.
Papa showed me a picture once."
The room felt very still.
"I'm sorry," I said.
"Papa doesn't talk about it." Leo looked at Rex.
"But sometimes at night he sits in the chair by my bed and thinks he's being quiet but he isn't.
His breathing is different when he's sad." He looked up at me.
"I think he's lonely.
But he doesn't know how to say it."
I had no answer for that.
None that was appropriate, none that was safe, none that didn't open a door I had absolutely no business standing near.
"You should sleep," I said gently.
"Will you be here tomorrow?"
"I don't know."
He accepted this with a gravity that was too old for his face.
He climbed down from the chair, tucked Rex under his arm, and walked to the door.
Then he stopped.
"Sara," he said.
My name in his mouth was careful, like he'd been practicing it.
"Yes?"
"Papa looked at you the way he looks at things he doesn't want to lose." He said it simply, factually, the way he'd said everything else.
"I just thought you should know."
He pulled the door shut behind him.
I lay back on the pillow and stared at the ceiling for a long time.
Then, at 2:14 in the morning, my phone lit up with a call from a number I did recognize.
David.
My ex-husband.
The man who had taken my savings, my grandmother's ring, and four years of my life.
Calling me.
Now.
At 2:14 in the morning.
May you like
I watched the screen glow and go dark.
Then it lit up again.
