Calvin found them without ever picking up the children’s trail.
He set a paper on Adrian’s desk the following afternoon.
“There’s a rumored seamstress on Arlington Drive.
Everyone in the area talks about her.”
Adrian looked up from the contract he hadn’t been reading.
“What kind of talk?”
“A woman who keeps her face covered.
They call her the veiled seamstress.
Hired by the shop owner three months ago.
She takes in mending and alterations.” Calvin paused.
“They say she can fix anything, no matter how the cloth was ruined.
But she keeps to herself and doesn’t talk much.
Her work is good enough that word gets around anyway.”
Adrian sat up straight on his leather chair, a pen in his right hand.
A veiled woman working as a seamstress.
The children walked east toward the rail yard, according to the old mango seller.
Arlington Drive was in that area.
It made sense to him now.
“You couldn’t follow the children,” Adrian said.
“So you followed the rumors instead.”
“The kids were a dead end,” Calvin admitted.
“They know how to hide.”
He didn’t like being outsmarted.
Least of all two six-year-olds.
“But a grown woman wearing a veil with exceptional mending skills can’t hide from the neighborhood.
People remember her.
Neighbors speak well about her and her children.
She’s kind, and the children are smart and polite, though no husband was in sight.”
Adrian stood and crossed to the window.
Costa Verde spread out below him under a gray sky.
Heavy clouds were coming and would drench the entire city by evening.
He had their location now.
He could be there in an hour if he wanted to.
And that was the problem.
He knew how it could go.
If a line of black cars suddenly rolled up on Arlington Drive, if his men started asking about a scarred woman, they might be gone by morning.
People who hid the way she hid did not wait to be found.
Her children moved as if someone had trained them.
So had she, most likely.
He couldn’t personally go there this soon and knock on her door.
He had to make her open it herself.
Adrian turned back from the window and glanced at the opened calendar on his tablet.
“There’s a gathering next month.
Every family and the entire council will be present.”
Calvin nodded.
He knew that one.
Most mafia families were looking forward to this year.
“I’ll need something new to wear.
Commission a suit made by hand,” Adrian continued, as if he was just ordering lunch.
“Take the job to the shop on Arlington Drive and pay whatever they ask.”
“You want the veiled seamstress to make your suit,” Calvin said slowly.
“I want one thing written into the deal.” Adrian met his eyes.
“Make it so she would be the one taking my measurements, not the shop owner.
Say it was about confidentiality and keeping the measurements accurate for the event.”
Calvin understood at once.
“And if she says no?”
“She won’t.” Adrian returned to his seat.
His mind went back to the two children selling purses on their own.
With no father, he could already guess the veiled woman was the children’s only provider.
They might have been trying to help their family get by.
“She needs the money too much to say no,” he added.
He hated how sure he was.
***
At the Moretti family’s ancestral mansion, Cecilia watched the same woman on a screen.
She sat in her study with the curtains drawn.
On the laptop in front of her, the video looped.
A recording at a bus stop.
A veiled woman with two children next to her.
Her man had pulled the same footage Calvin had pulled.
It was easy for her to find the recording her son requested, but she wasn’t sure what she was watching, what she should be seeing.
She clicked the replay button and watched it for the third time.
Still nothing.
The veil hid the woman’s face.
The distance blurred the rest.
The woman could have been a beggar, a widow, or a stranger with a disfigured face.
‘Or she could be that girl,’ Cecilia thought.
She pushed the idea away.
‘No, that can’t be.
She’s dead, and I made sure of it.’
Yet, she still couldn’t find any logical reason Adrian would have a sudden interest in the veiled woman on the video.
The video played once again.
Cecilia considered that perhaps it wasn’t the veiled woman.
Maybe another person near them that Adrian had recognized.
She closed the laptop, stood, smoothed her dress, and walked to the window.
Control of her own son was slipping, she could feel it.
She was used to Adrian being passive for the past seven years.
He always gave in to her—except for the marriage arrangements she tried to impose on him.
Angelica Romanov was her last chance.
Every woman before her had failed to win Adrian’s heart.
How long was she supposed to fight a dead woman?
Sarah had been dead for seven long years, and yet Adrian couldn’t move on from her.
Cecilia rubbed her temple.
Another headache coming.
Already dead, but still causing her problems.
De Lucas.
Every time, they found a way to ruin her life.
They’d already taken her brother.
She wouldn’t let them take her son, too.
Adrian had been acting strange for the last month.
He looked distracted and unusually quiet, which only meant his attention was on something or someone else.
He was chasing something.
She knew that.
Cecilia picked up her phone.
“Do we know what Adrian’s schedule is for the next few days?”
“I’m sorry, Madam.
Our people were just fired this afternoon from the Moretti Tower.
Personally ordered by the Don.
We tried to get information from them, but…”
“But what?”
“Most of them were either dead or had disappeared,” her assistant said.
“Madam, the Don didn’t want us to interfere anymore.”
Cecilia’s grip tightened on her phone.
Her eyes rimmed red.
‘Adrian.
How could you do this to me?’
“Stop following him,” she said.
She had no other choice.
Cecilia knew that if she kept pushing, Adrian wouldn’t spare her.
Sending her people to their deaths was already a warning he was willing to give.