While the two elder sisters chased their private chaos through the night, the youngest—and by far the most terrifying of the three—served as someone's silent instrument.
They sat in the back of a discreet coffee house on the edge of Paradise's old quarter.
Late evening or early night... whatever your English served.
It was the kind of place that kept its lights low and its espresso machine hissing long after respectable people had gone home, a sanctuary for conversations too dangerous for daylight.
The air carried the bitter-sweet burn of dark roast, the faint metallic tang of rain on hot pavement drifting in every time the door opened, and the low, constant murmur of jazz from a speaker someone had forgotten to turn down.
Maya waited in the blacked-out sedan outside, engine idling so softly it was more felt than heard—a low, steady vibration through the soles of their shoes.
