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The man hesitated for less than a second. “Sir?”

“Take the second vehicle.”

The driver stepped away without question, leaving the front passenger door open as he crossed the car park toward another vehicle. Zeno tipped his chin toward the empty seat, then looked at me. It was less an invitation than a command.

I turned to Adriana. Her eyes moved to the convoy, then to Zeno. She didn't ask whether we could trust him. Perhaps she understood that trust was no longer one of the luxuries available to us.

I opened the rear door. Adriana climbed inside, gathering the coat around her before moving across the leather seat. She kept her back straight despite the exhaustion dragging at her. I closed the door and took the seat beside Zeno. He started the engine. The convoy moved before he did. Two vehicles pulled out first, sweeping onto the motorway. Another waited behind us. The rest spread through the car park to cover our departure. Zeno joined the road without looking back. The diner disappeared behind us.

For several minutes, the only sounds inside the car were the sweep of the windscreen wipers and the low growl of the engine. Rain streaked across the glass. Headlights passed in pale flashes, briefly illuminating Zeno’s hands on the wheel. They were steady, but the controlled expression he wore for other people had begun to crack at the edges.

I looked out through the passenger window. Dark fields stretched beyond the road, broken occasionally by stone walls and distant farmhouses. We had travelled this country together as boys, speeding down roads our fathers had warned us to avoid, convinced death was something that happened only to slower men.

Zeno changed lanes. The convoy shifted around us as one body.

“Tell me,” he needled.

“Not here.”

“Here is precisely where you will tell me.”

I glanced toward the back seat.

Adriana sat behind me, her face turned toward the window. The reflection in the glass revealed that she was listening.

Zeno continued driving. “Start at the beginning.”

There was no room in the car for refusal. So I told him. I told him about the night Adriana had come into my church, bleeding through her clothes and struggling to remain on her feet. I told him about her father, Gabriele Serra, and his work for the Coccico cartel. About the accounts he had handled, the discrepancies he had discovered and his suspicions that the cartel was involved in more than financial crimes.

Adriana remained silent behind us. I couldn’t see her face, but I heard the faint change in her breathing when I spoke about her father.

“He tried to go to the police.”

“And they killed him,” Zeno replied.

“Yes. She witnessed it.”

Zeno’s fingers tightened around the steering wheel.

I looked toward the mirror. Adriana was watching me. Our eyes met in the narrow strip of glass. For one moment, I saw what my account had cost her. She had folded herself into silence, but the memory was alive behind her eyes.

I continued. I told him about taking Adriana to the convent, and the village where we had stopped for supplies and the men who had found us there.

Zeno passed a slow-moving truck, the engine surging as we entered the empty lane ahead. “So, the Coccico family murdered an accountant, failed to kill his daughter, followed her into a church, then attacked you in a village.”

“Yes.”

“And somewhere during all of that, you decided this was your responsibility.”

“Adriana came to me.”

“She came to a priest.”

“She came to my church.”

“There is a difference.”

I turned my head. Zeno’s eyes were black in the dim interior. Behind me, the leather shifted softly. I became aware of Adriana again. Of what she had heard. Of what Zeno was revealing without giving her enough to understand it.