Truth was, I would.
Maybe it should’ve felt dark, dangerous, too close to Max and the Outfit and the parts of my life I wanted to escape, but it wasn’t scary at all. If anything, it was reassuring. Because if he’d kill for me, he’d fight for me. He’d stay.
“Well, if anyone turns up, I’ll knowexactlywhat to tell the police,” I said with a smile.
“Don’t put me in the position, and you won’t have to tell anyone anything.”
I rolled my eyes, mostly because it was easier than admitting how much I liked hearing him say things like that—things that felt possessive, protective, and maybe even a little clingy. Things I shouldn’t want from a man who was supposed to be a temporary arrangement, a contract I’d signed in desperation.
“I’m serious, Valentina.”
“I know you are.”
I stood there, caught somewhere between running to him and running away, my heart pounding a little too fast, my mind racing with all the ways this could—and probably would—end badly.
Because Marco wasn’t temporary. Not anymore. Maybe he never really had been. Every line we’d drawn had blurred until neither of us could remember why we’d drawn them in the first place.
“Buenas noches, mijo.”
“Marco,” he corrected, agitated. “Call me by my name, Valentina.”
I blinked at him, thrown for half a second by how fast it had landed. It wasn’t the words. It was the way he’d said them—like they mattered. Like my using anythingotherthan his name wasn’t just annoying but offensive. Like I’d reached somewhere I didn’t belong.
Weird.
I’d only said it to mess with him, maybe flirt a little. To be soft in that way that wasn’t really soft. The word had slipped out before I’d thought about it—lazy, in the way Spanish nicknames sometimes were.
Mijo.
It wasn’t a big deal.
Until it was.
“Buenas noches,Marco,” I said again, slower this time.
I watched the way his jaw unclenched just slightly. As if that single syllable had settled something.
Still didn’t explain the reaction.
It wasn’t like him to care about that stuff. He wasn’t precious. He didn’t need to be handled gently, and he definitely didn’t mind when I pushed his buttons. If anything, heinvitedit. But this? This wasn’t irritation. It felt like something else.
But I didn’t know what to do with that, so I let it go. Or at least, I pretended to as I walked away with my smile in place, though the whole time, my brain was spinning. For a man who acted like nothing ever touched him, like nothingmattered, he sure didn’t like being misnamed.
And part of me—the part I didn’t say out loud—wondered how many people had gotten it wrong before me.
I wondered how many of them hadn’t even noticed.
CHAPTER 32
MARCO
Max had done this on purpose.
I knew it the second we set foot into the precinct. It was there in the way he took his time shaking the rain off his coat. The way he smirked when the officer at the desk barely looked at him before nodding us through.
Sebastian Callahan was sitting in the holding room with his arms crossed, looking like he was two seconds from either laughing or knocking someone’s teeth in. Maybe both.
“Remind me again,” I muttered, adjusting my tie as we stepped inside. “Why are we here?”
