Page 125 of Malicious Claim

"It was a bit more than small talk," I said, letting a slow smile creep across my face. "I asked Stefanos if he knew why you gunned down my family, and he told me it was for revenge." I leaned forward, locking eyes with Makros. "Tell me, was he wrong?"

"Interesting. So now you're the family history teacher, Stefanos?" Makros' eyes drifted from me to him. "Teaching Leila about things beyond your place."

Stefanos bristled, obviously not anticipating me throwing him under the bus like that. His jaw clenched as he replied, "What's the use of keeping it a secret? They killed—"

"Shut the fuck up!" Makros' hand slapped the table, jiggling the silverware and cutting Stefanos off in mid-sentence. Heads turned in our direction.

Oh, Stefanos had been just about to slip again.

Makros adjusted his suit with a new calm. He refocused on me. "Did you ever get up from the table?"

I nodded. "Yes, I needed to use the bathroom."

"To do what?"

I gazed at him incredulously. "What humans do in bathrooms."

A muscle twitches in his jaw.

Stefanos snickered and cut in. "She went to fix her makeup."

Makros' eyes narrowed. "To fix her makeup? That would mean she took her purse with her?"

Stefanos glared at me, then at Makros. "Yeah."

Makros nodded once. I could tell he was restraining himself by a loose thread.

"How can you be so careless, Stefanos?"

Stefanos raised an eyebrow. "What?"

Makros' voice lowered. "Did you go through her purse after she came out?"

Stefanos let out a short, cynical laugh. "You're joking, right?"

Makros wasn't, the way his shoulders squared up. "No, I'm not."

Stefanos' fists clenched on the table. "That would've been stupid."

A strained quietness lay between them.

Then Makros spoke scarcely above a whisper. "What happened after you came out of the bathroom?"

I forced an even tone to my voice. "When I came out of the bathroom, I noticed Stefanos talking with someone. A man. I had not expected he was supposed to meet somebody else."

The moment the words tumbled out of my lips, Stefanos's body stiffened. Makros noticed too. His eyes narrowed back at Stefanos, fixing him in place.

Stefanos scoffed, though that didn't help the tension underlying his voice. "That? That mad man. Some guy walked up to my table, took my drink as if it belonged to him, and started spouting nonsense."

Makros didn't look convinced.

Stefanos continued, his voice increasingly more unsettled. "He was looking for someone to buy him a drink. But he was acting very entitled about it. So I told him to leave and not show up again, and that's when Leila came back. Then he just upped and went on his way."

Makros exhaled slowly, and without a word, he got to his feet.

"Follow me."

I had an idea where we were going, and it scared me, but only if Vincenzo's contact had not played his part.

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