Under a Borrowed Name

Chapter 14: What Sofia Chooses Not to Say

Sofia saw the kiss.

She had stepped out onto the far end of the terrace for air of her own, away from a conversation with a board member's wife that had long since stopped being interesting, and found herself an accidental witness to the exact moment her brother's carefully guarded composure finally, completely gave way.

She did not say anything. She simply stepped back inside before either of them noticed her, and stood at the bar nursing a drink she did not particularly want, turning over in her mind everything she had learned about Elena Marchetti over the past several weeks, weighing it all against what she had just seen.

No history before six years ago. A face that seemed to unsettle her father in ways he could not quite articulate. A woman who fought for the truth about Halloway with an intensity that made no professional sense for a hired consultant, and who now stood on a terrace kissing Damian like he was the only thing keeping her upright.

Sofia had run enough background checks in her life to know what an assembled identity looked like when she saw one. She had simply chosen, so far, not to say the word aloud, not even to herself.

"You look like you're solving a very complicated equation," Julian said, appearing at her elbow with a drink of his own. She recognized him vaguely from somewhere, though she could not immediately place where.

"Do I know you?"

"Julian Reyes. I've worked with Elena on a few projects." It was, technically, not a lie, though the careful neutrality in his voice suggested there was considerably more to the sentence than he intended to offer. "You're Sofia Kane."

"I am." She studied him for a moment, the same assessing look she gave everyone new in her orbit. "You know her well, then. Elena."

"Well enough."

"Well enough to know where she actually grew up? Well enough to know why her entire life before six years ago looks like it was erased on purpose?"

Something flickered behind Julian's eyes, quick and controlled, but not quick enough to escape Sofia's notice entirely. "I think," he said carefully, "that if there's something in Elena's past worth knowing, it should come from her, when she's ready to share it. Not from a stranger at a party."

"That's a very diplomatic way of confirming there's something to know."

"That's a very Kane way of hearing confirmation in anything I say." Julian's smile was thin, tired. "For what it's worth, Ms. Kane, whatever you're worried she's hiding, I don't think it's the kind of thing that should make you afraid of her. I think it's the kind of thing that should make you a little more afraid for her."

Sofia turned that over carefully, watching him for any further sign of what exactly he meant, but he offered nothing more, excusing himself a moment later with the practiced ease of a man who had said exactly as much as he intended to and not a word further.

She found her brother twenty minutes later, alone at the edge of the ballroom, a private, unguarded smile still lingering at the corner of his mouth in a way she had not seen since before their mother died.

"You look happy," she said carefully.

"I am." He glanced at her, something almost sheepish in his expression. "Is that a problem?"

Sofia thought about the terrace, about the man named Julian and his careful non answers, about a face her father could not stop trying to place, about a letter from a man named Alistair Cain and a pattern of destroyed families stretching back further than any of them yet understood.

She thought about grief, and about how easily people who loved each other could still end up hurting one another without meaning to, simply by keeping the wrong things buried for too long.

"No," she said finally, deciding, for tonight at least, to let her brother have this. "It's not a problem. Just be careful, Damian. Whatever this is. Some things that look simple at a gala get a lot more complicated once the lights come back on."

He did not ask what she meant, too lost in whatever warm, unguarded feeling still had hold of him, and Sofia let him have that too, filing away everything else she had learned tonight for a conversation she suspected, with growing certainty, was coming for all of them far sooner than any of them were ready for.