"HAVE YOU CALLED THE police?" Antonio asks me, his grey eyes probing. They traverse the length of the apartment, making me feel inadequate. This little home where I grew up, with the pencil marks on the wall to measure my height, seems shabby compared to what I've seen of his home and his opulent tastes. But at least my mom didn't make her money dealing drugs and doing God knows what. Yet another reason that I can't bring myself to agree to his do-over.

I watch him as he studies the open-floor plan of the small rooms. He doesn't seem at all ruffled by my rejection of his offer. Is the man human at all? When he asked me to start over with him, I thought he might have been. Now, I don't know what to think. Rationally, since he's offering to help me find my mother, I can infer that he cares about me, at least. Emotionally? Well, that's a whole other bag of snakes.

His question surprises me. Why would a member of the mafia ask me to call the police--a high-ranking member, at that? "No. I thought about it, but then again, should I?" I chew on my lower lip, tasting cherry lip balm. "I mean, if they dig into my life, they'll find... You."

You. And all the messiness that comes with Antonio Cavalli's presence. Guns. Bullets. Being fugitives from the law. The FBI. Cracked windows. Snipers. A boatload of drama and the life-or-death kind at that. Everything that my mother fought to protect me from. Now I've thrown that protection away, scorned her efforts, and she could be lost because of it. A sob breaks free in my chest, like a rosebud unfurling, a floodgate swinging open.

"I have contacts in the police department," he says, his expression grave as he reaches for me. I move away, not wanting him to touch me. I don't need his affection. Not from hands that have caused innumerable amounts of harm to people that will never receive the same comfort. "I'll get them on it."

"You have contacts in the police department?" I repeat, my mind still stuck on one perception of him for a moment before the realization sticks, sinking in as quickly as an anchor dropped off a ship. Disappearing into deep, dark recesses. Into the shadows of this world. "I... Oh. Of course, you do."

I should have realized. It's foolish of me to think this world is so black and white, to think that all federal agents are working for the interests of their country and government. To be misled into believing everyone joins the police force in order to serve their community and not to enrich themselves. After all, I've known Antonio. Shouldn't I be smart enough to realize that evil can exist anywhere, especially in the man standing before me?

Yet the world is not as simple as I would like to believe, either. Of course, I should have known. Antonio is not purely terrible. He's not only, completely good--a diamond necklace and an offer of help don't change that. I doubt that he's never caused anyone else's mother to disappear before. I doubt that no other girl has ever been set to pacing around her own apartment somewhere in this world, worrying about her mother. I doubt that he's never been the cause of anyone else's pain.

And they didn't have a crime lord to help them find their vanished mother. Right now, he's only helping me because... because what? He's attracted to me? I matter to him, and so he will help me. I am important to him. I am a tool, a weapon, a way for him to annoy his father and satisfy some baser inclination. I am not nothing to him, but a short step away from someone.

He's helping me because I am useful. But he wouldn't help someone else who didn't matter to him. He wouldn't help a stranger. He wouldn't help somebody who was of no use to him, in the same way, that people throw away broken toys. And that's what makes the difference between a good man and a powerful man. The powerful one needs to keep his power.

Still, I can almost taste the pain on his lips, glimpse the betrayal in his eyes at my accusation that he's in league with some corrupt cops. He leans against the wall, a marble statue clad in black: leather jacket, jeans, sweater. A little more casual than the usual suit. Still as untouchable and void of warmth as ever. Yet the words he speaks are ones I want to hear, words of comfort and reassurance. "I'm sure your mother will be fine."

The reminder of what I called him here for, the bombardment of events today that have rattled the frame of my world, shakes me a little. Something inside my chest cracks, crumples, leaving me hollow. "I can't live without her, Antonio. If... If my actions caused her to fall into the hands of some drug lord somewhere... I don't know what I would do with myself. I wouldn't be able to live with myself."

"I won't let that happen," he promises. But a twisted voice in my mind whispers: what if he already has?

What if he's the cause of all my problems and his presence in my life is what leads to my mother lying dead in a ditch somewhere? I wring the denim jacket in my hands, the fabric rough against my palms, the metal buttons digging into my skin. The discomfort keeps me alert, awake, keeps me from fully giving in to him.

"Okay." I look up at him and tell him a lie that I think we both want to believe. "I trust you."

"IT'S BEEN A LONG time, Linda," I say, looking at the woman who has just entered my room. Her footsteps are light, like those of the small sparrow that likes to peck at the seeds scattered on my windowsill. "Who let you in here?"

She says nothing. I could hear her coming from her footsteps, the same way she walks in sensible shoes. Not in teetering heels the way my wife or daughters do. She moves like a dancer, like someone who can escape from grasping hands in a graceful instant. Someone who can disappear just as quickly, just as she did twenty-two years ago.

"It couldn't have been my wife, Marcella." I turn to look out the window. If she doesn't wish to talk, I will do it for her. "Nor could it have been Priscilla, or Joanna. Perhaps it was Augusta, then, if you bribed her with candy or a good book."

"It was none of them," she says at last. "Your guard, Bruno, recognized me."

"Now that is a surprise." I look at Linda at last, drinking in each drop of her appearance. It remains unchanged yet so much about her is different now. The same sensible shoes, but her hair is shorter, cut into a wavy bob. She wears much less makeup, only a swipe of pink lipstick lending colour to her pale face. Her clothes are practical, jeans and a sweater, but well-fitted to her body. "Have you come to see me before I die?"

"You're forty," she says bluntly, her hands on her hips. "You're not about to keel over, Charles."

I smile at her language, the way she never minces a word. It's refreshing, after being surrounded by so much deception and intrigue, to hear someone speak in such straightforward tones. "You're here to tell me about our daughter, then? Christina, isn't she?"

"I came here to ask you to protect her," she says, her voice tinged with desperation. Linda looks like she's about two steps from falling on her knees to plead with me. "The Cavalli's have her and I don't know... I don't know how to get her out. Please, Charles, if you ever cared for me at all..."

"How did you find me, Linda?" I can't help but size her up again. What has she done in the time, in the two decades that we haven't spoken? Her ring finger is empty, with no tan line to mark a divorce either. I gesture toward the chair next to the bed, the one that my daughters take turn filling, but Marcella, never. "Have a seat."

I can see the movement of her throat as she swallows. "I shouldn't. I shouldn't have come here. It was a mistake."

Rote words recited as an automatic defence. Of course, she would say these things, when faced with a man who owns some of the deadliest weapons and in charge of some of the most dangerous criminals in New York and France. Still, I notice that she doesn't answer my question. It doesn't matter, I suppose. I'll know the answer soon enough.

Again, I wave a hand toward the chair. "I said to take a seat, Linda. In case you hadn't noticed, I'm in no shape to pounce on you."

She sits daintily, holding her purse on her lap. "Have you seen Christina?"

"I wouldn't know if I had." Or would I? Would I recognize my daughter immediately upon locking eyes with her? Would some immediate genetic, paternal instinct click into place and alert me? "When you say the Cavalli's have her--what do they want with her, exactly?"

I know, of course. I was there when Antonio Cavalli all but spat in my face and broke our uneasy alliance. But I would like to hear her say it.

"How should I know?" She wrings her hands, twining the cheap fake leather material of her purse strap around her fingers. "It's not as though they broke into my house and dragged her out by the hair. No--she went with them willingly! With that man..."

"What man?" It's no fun to feign ignorance, but without complete certainty, one cannot go around making assumptions. "Was it one of the Cavalli's?"

She nods emphatically, tears welling up in her brown eyes. "Yes, she went off with Antonio Cavalli. And now, my daughter is ruined!"

"Linda, Linda." Her tears, while moving, seem unnecessary. What can I do for her if her daughter decides to make the wrong choices--if our daughter chooses the wrong paths to go down? It isn't as though bringing yet another drug lord into your daughter's life will improve it, if she's already gotten herself entangled with the Cavalli's. "What do you mean, ruined? This is the 21st century, not a Jane Austen novel. Even if she spent the night at his house, I highly doubt it would ruin her reputation."

"I'm not talking about her reputation! I am referring to her life," Linda snaps, her hands gripping the bed rail. "Who knows what the Cavalli's could do to her?"

"Trust me, Linda," I say, turning away to look out the window. I can't bear to see her face. Not when it brings back so many old memories from twenty years ago. Somehow, two decades have passed with the wrong woman, raising the wrong children. Is Priscilla even mine? She has my spirit, her mother's fiery tenacity. But Joanna--Joanna, the daughter of my heart if not my blood--how could I abandon her? I am bereft, then, of any legacy at all. Daughters only. "The Cavalli's are quite civilized. They are hardly bent on roasting her and eating her flesh like cannibals."

The words don't reassure her, as I suppose they wouldn't assure any worried mother. I have never been very skilled in comforting distraught women, and I doubt I can start now. "They're civilized? Is that how you wound up in a hospital bed, riddled with bullet holes?"

I smile at her tone. "If I didn't know better, I would think you were actually concerned for my well-being."

"Nonsense." She sniffs, dabbing at her cheeks with an embroidered handkerchief that she pulls from her purse. The pattern is familiar. When she catches me studying it, Linda freezes, tucking it away. "I haven't thought about you in twenty-two years."

"So you never wondered how the father of your child was doing, Linda?" I inquire, for once asking a question that I don't know the answer to. One whose answer piques my interest more than I would like to admit. "You never thought to ring me up once in all these years and say, comment ca va?"

Linda balls up the handkerchief, the monogrammed insignia showing between her fingers. CM, for Charles Martell. "Only when Christina asked me where her father was and even then, I could not bring myself to tell her."

"What did you tell her instead?" I say, bracing myself for some hurtful lie. Why do I care so much? Why do I bother asking? These questions aren't about to further my business or benefit me. No, instead they're more likely to wound me. Yet I keep digging for the truth. "That you didn't know who her father was?"

Anger flashes in her brown eyes. Each word is cutting in its enunciation, sharp and cold. "I told her you were dead."

I recline on the pillows. They're far too firm for my taste. "I suppose that's better than any number of alternatives. It's almost true, isn't it? I was dead to you, the moment I married Marcella."

The fury escapes Linda, draining from her face like air from a balloon at a child's birthday party, leaving her pale. "I always knew you would marry Marcella. My only mistake was letting myself get involved with you in spite of it."

All those years ago, and still, I have lingering regrets. Not only because Marcella turned out to be a cheater, but also because... Because I thought of Linda. She was only a waitress working in the bar that my father owned. She hadn't deserved to be caught up in my life of crime. Yet I had wanted to sweep her away into it anyway, because of my own selfish desires. Is her daughter about to make the mistakes that Linda didn't?

"Well, I certainly hope you don't tell your daughter that she is a mistake," says a familiar, icy voice at the door. "Hello, Charles. We meet again."

Seeing Antonio Cavalli at the door, I reach for my gun and fire off a shot. This time, I don't miss.