He had, it turned out, been preparing for this work since he was fourteen years old, in a courtyard, with borrowed books.

Chapter 41 — The First Case

His first case was a sixteen-year-old boy whose guardian controlled the money the boy’s dead mother had left him.

Santiago’s hands trembled as he read the file, because he had read this file before, in another form, about another boy.

He knew the shape of it in his body.

He knew what the fear did to a person, and what the silence protected, and how a child could be taught that the safest thing was to make no sound at all.

And he knew, now, the thing that sixteen-year-old did not yet know: that a door could open.