I noticed it before either of them said a word to me about it — the particular lightness in Law's step after he left Alex's apartment, the way he'd started humming under his breath while reading through casino paperwork, small things that told me more clearly than any conversation could that whatever had been building between the two of them had finally tipped over into something real.
I was glad for him. Genuinely. I'd watched that boy carry a wall around himself for two decades, and watching it come down, brick by brick, for someone who actually deserved the privilege, was about the closest thing to fatherly pride I allowed myself with him.
Which made what I had to say next considerably harder.
"Sir," I said, catching him alone in his office one evening, the kind of careful opening I usually reserved for news he wasn't going to want to hear. "I need to talk to you about Karen."
"What about her," Law asked, not looking up from his desk.
"I've been driving Alex to her new apartment most weeks," I said. "She asks about you. Every time. Not in passing — directly. What you're doing, whether you've mentioned her, what your schedule looks like."
"She's lonely," Law said, echoing the same explanation he'd given me before. "She just got her life back. Of course she's curious about the people in it."
"I don't think it's curiosity," I said carefully. "I think it's something else, sir, and I think you should consider it before it becomes a problem neither of you can manage quietly."
He finally looked up at that, something sharper coming into focus behind his eyes. "You think Karen has feelings for me."
"I think Karen has spent two years with nothing and no one," I said, "and you were the first person who showed her real kindness without asking for anything back. I think that's a dangerous combination, and I think it's worth paying attention to before Alex gets hurt by something neither of you saw coming."
Law was quiet for a long moment, turning the idea over the way he turned over every problem — carefully, from every angle, looking for the version of the truth he could actually live with. "Alex would know," he finally said. "If something were really wrong, he'd know. He knows his sister better than anyone."
"Alex is in love," I said. "People in love miss things, sir. Especially things about the people they trust most."
"What do you want me to do," he asked. "Stop visiting her? Pull back from someone who's already lost almost everything else in her life? That seems cruel, Markus, on the strength of a feeling you can't even fully explain."
"I'm not telling you to abandon her," I said. "I'm telling you to be careful. Set boundaries she can't misread. Don't be alone with her if you can avoid it. Make sure Alex understands what you're seeing, even if you're not entirely certain yet."
"And if I'm wrong," he said, "and I treat her differently because of a suspicion that turns out to be nothing — what does that do to her? She's already spent two years feeling forgotten by everyone who matters. I won't be the next person who makes her feel that way over a guess."
I didn't have a good answer for that, not one that didn't sound colder than I actually felt. So I let it go, the way I'd let it go once before, telling myself I'd raised the concern and done what I could, and that the rest was out of my hands.
I think about that conversation often now, the same way I think about the first time I noticed Karen watching Law a little too closely. I had every chance to push harder. I didn't. I told myself caution was kindness, that suspicion without proof was its own kind of cruelty, and I let a good man's decency talk both of us out of doing the one thing that might have changed everything that came after.
It wouldn't be the last time I made that particular mistake.