Tristan studied the man now, as he smoked a cigar, a gun sitting on the table before him, the metal glinting in the bright lights of the room. A few other men had their guns out as well.
That didn’t bother Tristan. Guns never had. His father had taught him how to hold a gun, and though he’d never fired one, Tristan liked guns. He liked the feel of it in his hands. One day, he was going to have his father train him in shooting them properly and he would own a collection of them.
One day. After Luna was home safe.
Moving on from the familiar faces of the family, the men Tristan had only ever seen in passing with his father but didn’t know the names of, he turned his neck to look at the other end of the table. That was where the guests from outside the city were.
He scrutinized them closely. The man at the head of the table was big, bigger than the Boss but not bigger than his father, in a dark suit like everyone else and a short beard. Tristan stared at his face for a long moment, memorizing it, and looked at his eyes.
Something heavy settled in his stomach.
He didn’t like this man. He didn’t like this man at all.
&
nbsp; His face was regular and his eyes were dark, but there was just something about them that would have scared any other boy his age. It only made Tristan dislike the man even more.
Yet, it wasn’t him who held his attention a moment later.
It was the woman, sitting beside the bad man in a pretty blue dress, holding a baby.
Tristan felt the breath rush out of his chest.
She was so small.
So much smaller than Luna. Wearing a pink dress, her head sparsely sprinkled with curly dark hair, Tristan could only see her back as the woman held her.
Had she been with Luna? Had she been with his sister, sat with her, cried with her?
How had she been found? Why only she and no other girl?
The questions never left his mind as he watched the little bundle in the woman’s arms, everything else forgotten. She was wiggling like an inquisitive little worm, trying to get away from the woman he assumed was her mother. Tristan remembered when Luna used to do that, the noises she’d made in her little chest in frustration, the happy laugh that had bubbled out of her upon release.
This baby was making the same noises. Tristan could hear her across the room.
“Just put her on the table, Alice!” the bad man’s voice made Tristan’s eyes narrow in focus.
He saw the woman, Alice, hurry to sit the toddler on the table in a way that she could see the room with her back to her mother.
Tristan looked at her face, feeling the same flutter in his chest he’d felt the first time he’d seen Luna.
She was beautiful – rosy cheeks chubby on her pink face, little cute legs folded on the wood of the table, pink mouth opened in a small ‘O’ of wonder as she looked around the room at all the people. But it wasn’t that which Tristan found so beautiful. It was her eyes. Big, pretty eyes the color of wheat and grass mixed together. Those eyes were blinking at people, at things – clear, sweet, pure. Untouched by the evil around her.
Tristan hoped his sister was the same way. He hoped he would see her like this one day soon. He hoped he would kiss her little fingers and blow raspberries on her tummy again.
Another tear left his eyes.
And then something happened.
He didn’t understand how. He didn’t understand why. But suddenly, the little girl’s eyes came to him beside the pillar in the shadows, found him.
She tilted her chubby little head in wonder.
And then she smiled.
A completely toothless, completely adorable smile that just knocked him in the stomach.
Tristan felt his own lips move.