Chapter 440 - 440: Primrose Hill.

Kyle typed his reply as the cab turned onto Knightsbridge.

[[Kyle: I don't know yet. But she promised to forget what she saw.]]

[[Unknown: Promises are cheap. Viktor vatches short girl now too.]]

Kyle stared at the message. Part of him wanted to tell Viktor to leave Eleanor alone. She had done nothing except stand on the wrong side of a road at the wrong time.

But a bigger part of him remembered Pike's voice.

"They're careful. That's not the same thing."

[[Kyle: Just watch. Don't touch.]]

[[Unknown: Da. Viktor knows rules, puppy.]]

Kyle put the phone away and leaned his head against the cold window.

-

The suite was dark except for the glow of the television.

Ella was curled up on the couch, the shark tucked under her chin, a cooking show playing on mute. She turned her head when the door clicked shut.

"You're back before midnight," she said. "I'm impressed."

"I keep my promises."

"Did you bring dessert?"

Kyle reached into his jacket and pulled out a small paper napkin folded into a square. He tossed it onto her lap.

Ella unfolded it. Inside was a single chocolate truffle, slightly squashed.

She stared at it. Then at him.

"You actually stole dessert."

"You told me to."

"I didn't think you'd do it!" Ella popped the truffle into her mouth and closed her eyes. "Oh my God. That's obscene. Rich people chocolate." Ella was being sarcastic because she came from money herself.

Kyle sank into the armchair across from her and loosened his tie.

Ella watched him while she chewed. The teasing faded from her face by degrees.

"How bad was it?"

"Her mother was there."

"Her mother?"

"Her mother." Kyle rubbed his eyes. "She runs the family. She wanted to look at me. Figure out where my money comes from."

"Did she?"

"No."

"Good." Ella pulled her knees up to her chest. "Did the lady try anything?"

Kyle thought about Eleanor in the doorway, arms folded against the cold, asking about a girl in a grey coat.

"No," he said. "She did something worse. She told me the truth."

Ella didn't ask what that meant. She just looked at him for a long moment, then held out the empty napkin. She knew Kyle wouldn't tell her either way even though he promised to keep her in the loop, he was doing just enough.

"Next time steal two."

Kyle laughed tiredly. "Go to bed, Ella."

"You first."

For once, he listened.

-

Saturday morning was bright and cold. The first clear sky they'd had since arriving in London.

Kyle left the hotel at half past ten. He told Cassandra he was going for a walk. She looked at him over her coffee, nodded once, and didn't ask anything else.

"Tell her I said hello," was all she said.

Kyle paused at the door. Cassandra didn't look up from her cup.

He smiled and left.

He hadn't told her where he was going. He hadn't told her who he was meeting. She had simply put the pieces together from a conversation at dawn and a man who couldn't sit still.

"Cass sees everything."

It was one of the reasons he trusted her. It was also one of the reasons he had stopped trying to hide things from her. There was simply no point.

-

Primrose Hill rose out of the north side of Regent's Park like a green wave. The path to the top was steep, and the wind grew sharper with every step. Joggers passed him. A man threw a ball for a golden retriever. Two teenagers sat on the grass sharing a thermos.

Kyle caught himself scanning every one of them.

The jogger in the red jacket. The man with the dog. A woman pushing a pram along the lower path. He checked their hands, their shoes, the way they moved. Whether anyone looked at him a beat too long. Whether anyone looked away too fast.

Nobody did.

But nobody had on Tuesday either, and two different people had been watching him anyway.

"Viktor's out here somewhere. Probably. And now he's watching Eleanor too."

The thought should have made him feel safer. It didn't. However, Kyle knew Eleanor was an unknown variable and anyone who knows Nakamura so far have all proven to be dangerous.

At the top, the whole of London spread out below. The skyline glittered in the morning sun, glass towers and church spires and cranes all jumbled together under a pale blue sky.

Maya was already there.

She sat alone on the bench at the summit, wrapped in the same grey coat, a thick sketchbook resting on her knees. No Leo this time. Just her and the wind.

Kyle stopped a few steps away. "Am I late?"

"You're early." She didn't look at him. She was looking at the skyline. "I'm earlier."

He sat down at the far end of the bench, leaving plenty of space between them.

For a while, neither of them spoke.

"I come up here a lot," Maya said finally. "When I can't think. Everything looks small from here. Like none of it can touch you."

"Does it work?"

"Sometimes." She ran her thumb along the edge of the sketchbook. "Not lately."

"Did you sleep last night?"

"A little." She almost smiled. "Better than before you showed up. Worse than before I knew any of this was real."

"That sounds about right."

Kyle waited.

"After your messages," she said slowly, "I went through my old sketchbooks. All of them. Susan keeps every single one in a box under the stairs. She's sentimental like that."

She opened the sketchbook on her lap. The pages were soft and worn, the corners curled.

"This one's from when I was fifteen. A year after they brought me home."

She turned it toward him.

It was a drawing in pencil. Rough. Clearly done by someone still learning. A pair of large hands holding an open book. Nothing else. No face. No body. Just the hands, and the book, and a small shape that might have been a child's knee resting against the edge of the page.

Kyle didn't say anything.

Maya turned the page.

The same hands. The same book. Drawn again, a little better this time. Then again on the next page. And the next. Dozens of them. Some in pencil, some in charcoal, some barely more than a few lines scribbled in a margin.

"I drew this over and over," Maya said quietly. "For years. My art teacher thought it was some kind of exercise. Susan thought it was sweet. I never knew what it was." She stopped on a page near the back. The hands were careful now, detailed, almost real.

"I never once drew his face. I tried. It never came."

This was something that came from a woman

She closed the sketchbook and pressed both palms flat on the cover, like she was holding it shut.

"Then you told me he read to me. Every night."

Her voice didn't break. But it came very close.

Kyle looked out at the skyline. He didn't trust himself to look at her.

"I'm not saying I want to meet him," Maya said. "I'm not saying I remember him. I don't. Not really." She took a slow breath. "But I've been drawing his hands for seven years, Kyle. And I didn't even know they were his."

The wind pulled at the pages of the sketchbook. Far below them, the dog barked happily.

"What do you want to do?" Kyle asked gently.

Maya was quiet for a long time.

"I want to know his name," she said.

Kyle turned to look at her.

She met his eyes. Steady. Frightened. Certain.

"Not to meet him. Not yet. I just want to know who he is." She swallowed. "You said if I knew his name, I'd search for him. That I'd find things that wouldn't tell me who he really is." Her hands tightened on the sketchbook. "So tell me first. Before I find it. Tell me the truth, all of it, and let me decide what to do with it."

"Let her decide what she can carry, Kyle. Don't decide it for her."

Cassandra's words came back to him so clearly he could almost hear her voice.

Kyle looked down at the worn cover of the sketchbook. At seven years of a man's hands, drawn by a girl who didn't know whose they were.

He had promised Marcello nothing. He had promised Viktor a seat in the room. He had promised Nakamura another conversation.

But he had promised Maya a choice.

Kyle thought about lying.

It would be easy. A false name. A dead end. Something that would give her an answer without giving her the truth.

And then one day she would search for it, and find nothing, and know he had lied to her too. One more person keeping the truth from her, the way the world had kept it from her for seventeen years.

He couldn't be another person who decided what she was allowed to know.

"His name," Kyle said quietly, "is Marcello Vescari."

Maya repeated it under her breath. Once. Twice. Testing the shape of it.

"And Maya," Kyle went on, "before you look him up, there are some things you need to hear from me first."

She held his gaze. Her knuckles had gone white around the sketchbook, but she held on.

"Then talk," she said. "I'm not going anywhere."