Chapter 167: CLXVII

Levi's POV

I watched them from the kitchen doorway.

Isabellla was sitting on the living room floor with Aria between her knees, working through the girl's hair with a detangling comb she had found somewhere in the apartment, which told me either she had bought it specifically or she had located one of the items Aria's bag contained and quietly repurposed it for the task.

Aria was sitting with the particular stillness of a child who had decided to allow something not passive stillness.

Active the kind where the child has made a considered agreement to cooperate and is holding to it with intention.

Isabellla worked section by section, starting from the ends the way you were supposed to, not pulling, moving upward through each knot with patience that I recognized as the same patience she brought to everything that required her hands and her full attention.

"Does that hurt?" Isabellla asked.

"A little," Aria said.

"But it is okay Daddy does it fast and it hurts more."

"We will go slow then," Isabellla said.

"He says I have difficult hair," Aria said.

"You have a lot of hair," Isabellla said. "That is different from difficult."

Aria considered this distinction. "He also says that," she said. "But he says it less."

I leaned against the doorframe and drank my coffee and watched them.

The thing that struck me was the ease of it. It was not that it looked effortless, because I could see the concentration on Isabellla's face and the active cooperation on Aria's, but that it looked like two people who had established a working trust quickly and were operating from within it.

Isabellla did not know how to tell Aria the test results. She had said as much to me earlier, sitting on the kitchen floor after the confirmation came through, asking how she was supposed to have that conversation with a six-year-old.

I had not had a useful answer. This was not a situation with an established script.

But watching her repaint Aria's hair in the living room, I thought that perhaps the conversation was less urgent than Isabellla believed it to be because Aria already knew.

She had known from the first moment she saw Isabellla in the hospital café and dropped seven balloons on the floor. The test result was information for Isabell for Aria; it was confirmation of something she had never doubted.

"Hold this," Isabellla said, placing Aria's hand on a section of hair.

Aria held it without comment.

"Good," Isabellla said, beginning the plait.

"You know how to do it tight," Aria observed.

"I learned from my mother," Isabellla said. "She had long hair."

"My mama had long hair too," Aria said. "In the dream almost as long as yours."

Isabellla's hands paused for half a second then continued. "Does it look the same?" Isabellla asked. "My hair and the hair in the dream."

Aria turned her head slightly to look at Isabell over her shoulder, which made the plait difficult, and Isabellla gently turned it back.

"Almost the same," Aria said.

"In the dream it was longer and sometimes she wore it in one big braid like this but bigger."

"I used to wear it like that," Isabellla said, quietly.

"In the dream or real?" Aria asked.

"Real," Isabellla said. "When I was younger."

Aria was quiet for a moment, sitting very still while the plait progressed.

"Are you going to tell me?" Aria asked.

"Tell you what?" Isabellla said.

"That you're her," Aria said. "My mama, are you going to tell me?"

The living room was very quiet.

"I'm still figuring out how," Isabellla said. Her voice was steady but required effort to keep that way I could hear it from the doorway.

"It is okay," Aria said. "I already know you can just say it when you're ready."

Isabellla's hands stopped entirely this time. She sat behind Aria for a moment without moving.

"You are a very patient person," Isabellla said finally.

"Daddy says I get that from you," Aria said.

Isabellla made a sound that was not quite a laugh and not quite a cry and was something between the two that she managed to keep very small.

She went back to the plait.

I pushed off from the doorframe and went back to my desk, because I had work to do and also because standing in the doorway watching that particular scene was doing things to me that I needed a few minutes to manage privately.

I had been on a call for forty minutes when I heard the front door. The call was with Marcus about the grid investigation. Hall, the communications officer with the anomalous access codes, had been brought in and questioned and had confirmed what we suspected.

That he had been coerced rather than recruited, a family member of his threatened to ensure his compliance. The information he had passed out was significant but not complete, which meant there was likely a second source still active.

I heard the door and the quality of the sound that followed it in the apartment told me it was not someone I had let in.

Vanessa had a key I had given it to her during the period when she was managing Blackthorn coordination in the pack territory and needed access to the operational files I kept here. I had not asked for it back.

I ended the call and went to the living room.

Vanessa was standing inside the door, her coat on, her eyes moving through the room.

She had taken in the situation quickly and completely in the way she did everything. Aria's bag by the sofa. Aria's boots by the door. Isabell on the floor with the completed plaits.

And Aria looking at Vanessa with the specific assessing quality that I had come to understand meant she was reading something.