The midwife's hands smelled of lavender and vinegar. They moved like machines she’d learned by memory long before Livia could name the midwife—kneading, pressing, counting breaths in that low, steady voice that made pain measure itself into tolerable parts. Livia felt every part of it. She felt the rope of pain tighten, then let go; the small, fierce weight slip out of her. Her hands clutched at the linen, at the carved headboard of the spare room in the Cruz townhouse, and when the child cried it was as if someone had broken a glass in the middle of her chest. "He's got his father's mouth," the midwife said, laughing when she shouldn't. "Strong lungs. Wrap him, quick—" Warm linen, the tiny fist curling around one of Livia's fingers; a red ribbon, thin as a shoelace, tied in a clumsy knot around the baby's wrist. It was a house custom—ribbons to bind luck, to mark crossings, to keep the fortunes from slipping away in a family of traders who believed in talismans as much as ledgers. He was perfect and small. Livia wanted to say a thousand things—thank you, stay, don't let them take him—but there was only the shallow, exhausted truth of her voice. "He's ours," she said. Her voice was sand and salt. The door opened. The room smelled differently when he came in—tobacco, ink, a metallic tang like coins. Her husband stood framed