Chapter 9: Trust Is Expensive
Trust, for Mia, had a body count.
Not always literal. Sometimes it was counted in taken backpacks, vanished adults, promised rides that became locked rooms, kind voices that turned into hands grabbing too hard at the wrong moment. By the time Adrian Cole sat across from her offering locked quiet and investigators, Mia’s internal ledger was already deep in deficit.
She made him answer questions in the café like a gate she could still close.
Where would they go?
Who else would know?
Would he take Leo if she fell asleep?
Would he call “just one friend in the department”?
What happened if Elena walked through the door tomorrow and found them with him?
Adrian answered every question without performing ease. A secure rental under a business entity, not his home address. Only his investigator at first. No, he would not remove Leo from her while she slept. No police tonight unless someone forced their hand. If Elena returned, Adrian would step back far enough to keep Mia from feeling ambushed—though he did not pretend he would simply disappear from his nephew’s life.
Mia hated that the answers were good.
Good answers were how expensive mistakes began.
Leo stirred and fussed; she rocked him, calculating calories, exits, weather, the amount of night left, the amount of her own strength left. She could refuse. She could walk into the street with a half carton of milk and a baby and hope the city remained indifferent enough to be safe. Or she could accept help from a man who looked at Leo like a ghost returned in flesh.
“If I go with you,” Mia said, “I don’t want to be cleaned up and presented. I don’t want strangers touching him. I don’t want anyone calling me brave like that fixes things.”
“Done,” Adrian said.
“And if I say we’re leaving, we leave. No discussion in front of extra people.”
“Done.”
Mia’s eyes burned. She wiped them on her sleeve before they could become evidence of childhood. “I don’t trust you.”
“I know.”
“I’m still coming.”
May you like
Adrian nodded once, accepting the distinction as if it mattered—which, to Mia, it did. Trust could stay unpaid. Cooperation could still be bought with one safe night and the chance that Lena/Elena might be found from a position stronger than a grocery store entrance.
They left the sandwich shop together under the thin treaty of mutual need: a man chasing a missing sister, a girl protecting a living child, and between them a bracelet that had already told more truth than either was ready to carry alone.
