Alessandro’s knees gave out.
He did not choose to kneel. His body simply remembered something power had spent years making him forget. His palms struck the wet concrete step. His shoulders shook once, then again. Tears fell onto the Milan coat, onto the silver buttons, onto the hands that had signed orders men feared to read.
There are moments when money becomes paper.
When power becomes noise.
When a name that makes restaurants fall silent means nothing beside the sound your child makes when he says, uncertainly, “Papa?”
Elena moved at once.
She stepped between them.
Not cruelly.
Precisely.
Her body made a wall.
“You cannot take him,” she said.
Her voice was low and even. Rehearsed, he realized. She had practiced this sentence in the dark.
“Not into your world. Not into the house where phones ring at three in the morning. Not into a life where he learns the names of dead men before he learns the names of his teachers.”
Alessandro looked up from the step.
“I only want to see him.”
“You say that now.”
“For one minute, Elena.”
Her jaw tightened.
Behind her, Mateo clung to her sweater.
Rosa closed the door halfway, enough to give the alley what privacy it could.
Alessandro did not stand. Something in him knew that if he stood too soon, she would see the boss again and not the man. He kept his knees on the concrete, rain running down the back of his neck.
