We met at a café downstairs. A Family-owned espresso bar on the ground floor of the building, the kind of place where the barista knew which customers to seat near the window and which ones to put in the back where the security cameras had a convenient blind spot. Neutral ground, technically. Sacred ground, supposedly. Violence was forbidden in Family establishments. That was the rule.
Rules, I was learning, were only as strong as the men who enforced them.
Cara arrived with an air of confidence, walking through the door like she owned the lease. She sat across from me with a smug smile, a supermarket shopping bag resting against the leg of her chair. Three months pregnant and balancing on thin high heels that clicked against the tile floor with deliberate precision. Every step calculated. Every angle of her body arranged for maximum effect. She looked at me as if she had already won.