Mateus Rocha did not raise his voice when he was angry.
That was the first thing Livia had learned about him years ago, when she was pregnant, terrified, and standing in a public clinic with trembling hands and no idea how to fill out a form that asked for the father's name. Other people became loud when the world was unfair. Mateus became precise. He collected facts, sorted them, and placed them in front of chaos like bricks in a wall.
Now he sat across from her at the small kitchen table in her apartment, wearing a gray shirt with the sleeves rolled up, a legal folder open beside a cup of coffee that had gone cold. Noah was asleep in the next room after a long day of questions Livia had not been able to answer. The apartment smelled faintly of soap, crayons, and the soup Helena had mad
