Chloe looked down at her hands.
Aaron always offered certainty.
He knew what would happen.
He knew whom people would believe.
He knew what she was capable of surviving.
Miriam gave her something less comforting and more useful.
A choice.
“Yes,” Chloe said. “Please.”
Lorenzo arrived at the hospital close to midnight.
He did not enter her room.
Sarah found him in the corridor beside Matteo.
A hospital employee was explaining visitor restrictions.
Matteo looked offended.
Lorenzo did not.
“She hasn’t asked to see me,” he said.
Sarah stopped in front of him.
“There’s something you need to know.”
His attention sharpened.
She told him only what Chloe had agreed she could share.
The coat.
The recording.
Gabriel.
Lorenzo’s expression emptied.
Matteo turned toward him.
“Your brother?”
Lorenzo looked at Sarah.
“Those were her words?”
“Yes.”
“Did she hear the recording?”
“She says she did.”
He looked toward the closed door.
For the first time that night, Sarah saw how young he was beneath the reputation.
Not harmless.
Not innocent.
But suddenly confronted by a name he had not been prepared to hear.
Matteo took out his phone.
Lorenzo stopped him.
“Who are you calling?”
“Our people.”
“And telling them what?”
Matteo hesitated.
Lorenzo looked toward the nurses’ station.
“We don’t send anyone to her apartment.”
“If Miller gets there first—”
“He may already be there.”
“Then we need—”
“People who can recover evidence without turning her home into another place she’s frightened to enter.”
Sarah watched him.
He seemed to be forcing each sentence through an instinct that wanted something faster.
Finally, Matteo put the phone away.
