Renzo nods slowly. "This has gone beyond the original disagreement. If you can't contain a threat like Keller, other families will notice. The ones that have been watching and waiting." He looks at me directly. "You know what they'll do with that information."
"I know."
Renzo is quiet for a moment, turning his thoughts over.
Then he asks, "You went to considerable lengths with Keller. What exactly did you need from him that you couldn't get another way?"
I look at the desk.
In eleven years Renzo has never asked me this directly. I have never told anyone.
"There is a national civil registry," I say. "Federal level with sealed personal records and identity documents. Only a sitting mayor can provide access."
"I need Keller to get me access to the registry. I need to find someone."
"Does she mean that much?" he asks.
The way he knew it was a woman without even asking made me wonder if my feelings were not as controlled as I thought they were.
For two years the woman in the car had been the last thing in my head before sleep and the first thing when I woke up and I had turned her over so many times in the dark that the memory of her had worn smooth with only the essential things remaining. Her hands are on my chest. The certainty of her movements and how she pulled a bullet out of a stranger without being asked.
I had been fighting for two years to be stable and now that I was, I needed to find her. Moreso now that Keller's daughter had come into my life and was making me think of her less and less.
I reach for another cigarette.
"The favor matters less than Keller thinking he can double-cross me," I say. "That can't stand regardless of anything else."
Renzo accepts this with a nod. "When we've handled Keller we can find her some other way. It'll take longer but it's possible." He pauses. "Do you have anything to identify her with?"
I think about her bra hanging in my closet.
"Nothing useful," I reply.
Renzo nods again and doesn't push it and I stand and light the cigarette and walk to the window, staring at the garden below where the roses along the far wall and I think about Nathalie sitting on that stone bench three days ago with her face tipped toward the sky.
I turn from the window. "They are observing us aren't they?"
Renzo nods.
"Have the maids get her ready," I tell Renzo. "She is going with us tonight, as collateral." I draw on the cigarette. "If Keller wants a show, we're going to give him one he wasn't expecting."
Renzo stands and leaves. I stand at the window alone and smoke and I do not think about the guilt that has kept me on a pullout bed in my study for three nights, or about a woman who lost her mother at twelve and has been trying to be seen ever since, orthat her father is the same man my family helped put into office over her mother's body.
* * *
The Jeep crawls through the city silently and I look at the back of the driver's headrest and I am acutely aware of Nathalie sitting beside me without looking at me. She has been this way since the maids finished with her and I had appeared in the doorway of the room.
I found her already composed and waiting, hair up, red dress, a deep neckline that had required a moment of recalibration on my part before I could look again. She had looked at me, looked away, and had not asked a single question the entire ride.
I don't know what I had expected. Questions may be resistance. Anything.
She gives me nothing and somehow I feel enraged.
We pull up outside the venue and I get out and Renzo gets out and a guard goes to assist Nathalie and she takes his hand and steps down and smiles at him and I watch this with my hands at my sides and feel irritation tighten in my jaw that has no business being there.
Renzo materializes at my elbow. "You could have helped her down," he murmurs.
I ignore him. He sighs and hands me a mask. It's a masquerade mask made out of metallic material. I slip it into my pockets.
