Sebastian Callahan.
My fingers tightened slightly on the page—not enough for her to notice, but enough for me to feel the tension bleed into my grip.
Sebastian fucking Callahan.
The kind of man who could flirt with your wifeandrob your safe in the same breath, and you wouldn’t notice until the next morning.
It wasn’t jealousy. It was the fact Sebastian existed in every corner of Valentina’s past, like a ghost who refused to stay dead.
I didn’t need to read the files to know their history. He’d been her distraction when her marriage was already a corpse, the man she’d let touch her when she was too tired to fight, and somehow, even now, even with my ring on her finger, he was still hovering.
I hated him for it. Not because I wanted to be him, but because he’d always been the kind of man Valentina noticed. And I’d never been the kind of man who could compete with that.
Once Valentina got what she wanted, once the two-year marriage was done, she’d be gone. Probably gone with him.
It didn’t matter. It wasn’t supposed to matter. I hadn’t offered her this marriage out of emotion. It was practicality. A means to an end.
I flipped the page, jaw tight, pretending I cared about the numbers in front of me.
Valentina’s attention drifted back to me again. “So,” she started, “are you actually gonna handle Callahan, or just keep shuffling papers about him?”
Of course she’d asked. She knew exactly which button to press. It was her favorite game.
I didn’t look up right away, buying myself a few extra seconds to swallow down the first response that wanted to come out—the one with teeth. “It’s a difficult one,” I admitted.
“Is it really that difficult for you? Sebastian isn’t exactly subtle. He’s loud, arrogant—exactly your type of case. It should be easy.”
I ignored the jab about my type. “Cases aren’t easy or hard. They’re either clean or messy.”
“And Sebastian’s is messy?”
“You’d know better than anyone,” I said dryly.
She scoffed, leaning forward just enough for me to notice. I wished I didn’t. “Why does it bother you so much? My past with him, I mean.”
“It doesn’t bother me that you have a past,” I said finally. “It bothers me that your past keeps showing up where it shouldn’t.”
“And that’s it?”
I hesitated. The rational side of me wanted to leave it there. To tell her it was business, nothing else. But the truth was messier, more complicated.
“It bothers me,” I said slowly, “that someone who’s done nothing to deserve your loyalty still has it.”
“You think I’m loyal to Sebastian?”
“I think,” I said, tapping my fingers restlessly on the desk, “that if Sebastian asked you for help, you’d hesitate. Not because you’d refuse, but because a part of you would want to say yes.”
She opened her mouth as if she wanted to argue, but then she stopped herself, considering. “You don’t trust me?”
I shook my head slightly. “I don’t trusthim.”
“You think he’d manipulate me?”
“He already has,” I admitted. “Multiple times. And you keep letting him.”
She pressed her lips together, obviously irritated, but surprisingly, she didn’t lash out. Instead she seemed to be weighing the accusation, actually thinking it over, which was somehow more unsettling.
“So what if I do?” she finally asked, quieter this time. “It’s not like I have a long history of good judgment.”
