Ink and Consequence

The sketchbooks have been on your worktable for six months. Eleven of them, hardcover, the pages warped from where Anya used to press too hard with her markers. You've catalogued every page twice. You've built a spreadsheet with timestamps and recurring symbols and the faces that appear too often to be invented. You've told yourself it's grief work — a way of staying close to someone you should have noticed was in danger. You've told yourself a lot of things. You're working on the seventh book when the studio door opens. You don't look up immediately. The morning appointments are done and you're not expecting anyone, which means it's probably the courier with the paper order, which means it can wait. Then the footsteps don't stop at the reception desk. They come all the way in. He's big. That's the first thing — not threatening exactly, but physically occupying, the kind of presence that changes the geometry of a room. Tattoos up both arms to the collar of his jacket, linework you recognise as serious, not decorative. Dark eyes that take in the studio, the sketchbooks on your table, your face, in a sequence that feels less like looking and more like reading. He doesn't introduce himself immediately. He looks at the sketchbooks. "Those are Anya's," he says. It isn't a question. Your hand goes to the nearest one without thinking — a reflex, the way you'd cover something private — and his gaze moves to your hand, then back to your face. "I'm Dante," he says. "Her brother." You knew she had one. She mentioned him the way people mention a wound — briefly, with care, not often. *My brother Dante. He worries.* She never said what he'd done before the tattoo shop. She never said the way he looked at her sketchbooks would feel like he was looking through a keyhole into something you hadn't known was secret. "She left them to me," you say. It's not defensive. It's true. "I know," he says. "I'm not here to take them." He pulls out the chair across from you without asking and sits down, and the measured way he does it — no aggression, no apology — tells you this is a man who has spent years learning exactly how much space to take up. "I need to know what she drew," he says. "And I think you've already been trying to figure that out." Your spreadsheet is open on the laptop behind you. You don't turn to look at it. "Why?" you ask. He looks at you for a long moment. The morning light catches the scar along his left jaw. "Because whoever killed her," he says quietly, "is still walking around."