The black folder felt heavier than it should have.
Matteo had placed it in my hands while two of his men moved toward the customer near Rosie’s front door.
Through the kitchen window, I could see Theo still sitting at the back booth, unaware that the room had changed around him.
I opened the folder.
My real name appeared on the first page.
Mara Vieri.
Below it was a photograph of me leaving our apartment three weeks earlier with Theo beside me.
Another photograph showed him outside his school.
Another showed Rosie locking the diner after closing.
I stopped breathing.
“What is this?”
Matteo took the folder back and scanned the pages as if he had never seen them.
His expression hardened.
“I didn’t order this.”
“You expect me to believe that?”
“No.
I expect you to believe what happens next.”
In the dining room, one of his men quietly blocked the front door.
The customer who had stood too quickly lowered himself back into his seat.
Rosie appeared in the kitchen doorway.
“Mara?”
“I’m fine.”
She looked at Matteo.
“No, you’re not.”
Matteo almost smiled, but there was no humor in it.
“She always this direct?”
“With men who scare my waitresses? Yes.”
Before I could answer, Theo slipped around Rosie’s hip.
“Mama?”
I moved immediately.
“Theo, stay with Rosie.”
He looked past me at Matteo.
“Is he in trouble?”
Matteo stared at him.
For a man who could silence a restaurant by standing, he looked completely unprepared for a five-year-old’s question.
“No,” Matteo said.
Theo considered that.
“Are you?”
One of Matteo’s men coughed into his fist, hiding something dangerously close to amusement.
Matteo’s gaze stayed on Theo.
“Possibly.”
Theo nodded as if this seemed reasonable.
Then Rosie guided him back toward the booth.
The moment he disappeared, Matteo turned to his men.
“Phone.”
The man near the door surrendered it without a fight.
He was middle-aged, raincoat buttoned crookedly, face sweating despite the cold.
“I didn’t do anything.”
Matteo looked at the phone.
“You photographed a child.”
“I was paid to confirm something.”
“By whom?”
The man swallowed.
“I don’t know.”
Matteo handed the phone to one of his people.
“Find out.”
I stepped between them.
“No.”
Every head turned toward me.
Matteo’s voice softened in warning.
“Mara.”
“No one gets dragged into an alley.
No one disappears.
Not because of Theo.”
His eyes narrowed.
“You think that is what I was going to do?”
“I know what you were capable of six years ago.”
Something sharp passed over his face.
Then, deliberately, he stepped away from the frightened customer.
“Call the police,” he told Rosie.
Rosie blinked.
“So we’re doing civilized today?”
“For her,” Matteo said.
It was the first proof that the man standing in front of me was not exactly the man I had left.
Not enough proof.
But a beginning.
The police arrived twenty minutes later.
The customer admitted he had been paid through an encrypted message to photograph Theo and confirm whether Matteo reacted to him.
That meant whoever sent him already suspected the truth.
And there was only one reason anyone in Matteo’s world would care whether he had a son.
Leverage.
After the officers left with the photographer, I took Theo upstairs to Rosie’s apartment above the diner.
Rosie sat
