The handwriting on the dossier was Lorenzo's.
"I will always clear the path for your dreams."
I stared at that line for a long, long time.
Five years flashed through my mind. Caring for his parents. Cooking, cleaning, keeping the estate running while the soldiers came and went through the side doors at all hours.
I thought about the envy that cut through me every time I saw the men and women I'd once worked alongside, the ones still gathering proof in the dark, still building their dossiers, still burning with the work I'd given up.
I laughed out loud.
So he did know how to protect someone's dreams.
I photographed everything, put it all back exactly as I'd found it, and finally made my decision.
"Sofia. I heard there's a placement open in the foreign territories. Central Asia, where our allies run their operations. Nobody's taken it yet."
"If you'll have me, I want to go."
A beat of silence on the line. Then her voice lit up.
"Yes. I always thought it was a waste when they buried you in the back rooms. This kind of placement doesn't come twice. It could be dangerous out there, but when you come home, your standing will be a different thing entirely."
I heard two soft taps of her fingers against something hard.
"Get yourself ready. You leave in a few days."
I hung up and started packing.
There was nothing left in this house I cared about.
Except the sweater. The last one my mother ever knitted for me. I was taking that.
She'd knitted me plenty of clothes when I was little. As I grew up, she got older. Her eyes weren't what they used to be.
I didn't want her straining herself, so I told her to stop.
Then I got pregnant, and suddenly I couldn't stand the cold.
She went and knitted me one anyway, in secret. Her eyes were bloodshot from the work, but she just waved me off.
"Homemade is warmer. I picked out the best yarn myself."
"You fuss over the baby in your belly, and I fuss over mine."
It hurt and it warmed me at the same time. I never could bring myself to wear it.
But now the sweater was gone.
I remembered coming home to find it missing. I'd been about to call Lorenzo and ask.
Then I saw Gemma's new post.
"Hehe, I just mentioned the babies were cold since they were just born, and a certain someone showed up with a sweater~"
"Thanking Daddy on behalf of the babies~ And of course, this Mommy's tailoring isn't too shabby either."
So that's where Lorenzo had gone. To throw a little party for her dogs.
In the photo, their heads were pressed together, bodies close.
Each of them cradling three puppies.
And I recognized it instantly.
The little dog outfits on those puppies had been cut from my mother's sweater.
When I pushed open the glass door of the club, Lorenzo and Gemma were sharing a single spoon over a slice of cake.
Lorenzo was a severe germaphobe.
At the estate, his plates were sterilized and stored apart from everyone else's. He never shared a utensil at the table, not with me, not with the men who'd bled for him.
Once, after I'd spent an entire day cleaning the house, I was so parched I picked up his glass and took a single sip of water.
He didn't say anything at the time. That night, the glass was in the trash.
He'd explained it afterward. Said it was a habit, the same care he took with everything that carried his name. The Surgeon, they called him, for how clean he kept his work.
Turns out the habit was selective.
Gemma spotted me and arched a brow, her smile dripping with sweetness she didn't mean.
"Oh, Adriana. You're here? Lorenzo and I have been close since we were children. We never really kept boundaries between us. Don't mind it, all right?"
"Lorenzo, what did I tell you? She'd never actually go through with severing the alliance."
"I mean, a woman who gave up her own standing in the Family, who can only survive on her husband's charity. Without you, how's she going to raise a child and care for her parents? And look at her, she followed you all the way down here. Clingy, isn't she?"
She pressed a hand flat to her collarbone, and her eyes flicked once toward the men by the door to see who was watching.
"Sigh. Next to that, I suppose my skin's just too thin. Nothing left for me to do but keep standing on my own two feet~"
Lorenzo pinched her nose, indulgent and fond.
"Always the clever one, aren't you? You've been a little troublemaker since we were children."
Then he turned to me, wearing the expression of a man prepared to forgive a child who didn't know any better.
