One auburn brow arches into those rebellious red curls at his temple. “You got a name, new maid?”
Katie.
My real name almost slips out, but I bite it back just in time. “Mia. Mia Jorge.”
For a heartbeat, his eyes narrow with unmistakable suspicion. Then his head tilts slightly, like he’s listening to something beyond the walls. Some sound I can’t hear. When his attention snaps back to me, the room seems to lose all its warmth. I’ve never seen eyes freeze over so fast.
He knows something. Somehow, he fucking knows.
My heart is doing acrobatics now as I wait for his verdict, but I keep my expression carefully concerned—like a maid anxious about losing her job, not a guilty intruder terrified of losing her life. He takes a step forward, mouth opening to deliver what’s surely going to be a verbal execution?—
“Roan.”
The voice floats in from the hallway, cheerful and deep and thank God, familiar. Dizzying relief rushes through me, and then Afrim Përmeti is there, filling the doorway with a wide smile creasing his weathered face. Did Roan somehow hear those approaching footsteps? That’s… unsettling.
“Atë,” Roan says, his voice losing none of its edge even when greeting his father. Afrim crosses into the room, undeterred by his son’s hostile mood, and pulls him into a firm embrace. Roan doesn’t resist, but he doesn’t exactly melt into it either—justperforms the mechanical back-patting ritual men do before breaking apart.
I drop my gaze, hoping to fade into the background.
It doesn't work.
“Ah, I see you’ve met Mia! She’s been an absolute delight.” Afrim’s words draw my gaze back up to him, and I manage what I hope is a warm, grateful smile.
The older Përmeti had completely blindsided me when I first arrived. I’d braced myself for a cold-hearted, paranoid bastard with a stick up his ass—basically, the way Roan is acting right now. Instead, I found a man who chats with the maids, asks about our families, and damn near glows every time he mentions his new grandson.
He’s actually so… human.Paternal.Which makes this whole situation infinitely more complicated.
I shouldn’t like him, not when my mission depends on staying detached. But the man makes it impossible. He even discovered I play chess and now regularly challenges me to games when my work is finished.
“A delight indeed.” Roan responds dryly, jerking me out of that fragile comfort and into the danger at hand.
My smile fades as I catch his gaze again, all that suspicion still glittering in those perceptive emerald eyes. He doesn’t believe a word of this performance, and somehow I know that the moment his father leaves, the interrogation will begin in earnest.
But thankfully, Afrim takes his son by the elbow, steering him towards the door. “Come, we have much to discuss. The business on Long Island…”
The second they’re gone, my shoulders slump and I rub a hand over my chest, trying to calm my racing heart. “Stop that,” I whisper to my traitorous body that responded to him in all the wrong ways. “Just stop, damn it.”
Hell, I’m going to have to avoid Roan Përmeti and that piercing look as much as humanly possible.
Get close to Roan and gather every scrap of intel you can on his import business—the shipping schedules, routes, everything.
Fuck that. Even the suspicion that he might be smuggling Albanians into the country through his company isn’t worth voluntarily putting myself in his crosshairs again.
I can find the information I need without getting anywhere near him. He hasn’t been around the past few weeks and I’ve managed just fine, haven’t I?
He’s too dangerous. He sees too much.
It would benefit both me and my mission enormously to stay the hell away from him.
2
ROAN
The name doesn’t suit her. It sounds wrong rolling off her tongue.
I’m not sure why, but the conviction in me is solid—Mia isn’t her real name. And I’ve learned over the years to trust my gut.
She doesn’t even look like a Mia. Not with that pretty blonde hair skimming her shoulders, perfectly framing that elegant neck I have a sudden, inappropriate urge to bury my face in. And those eyes—Jesus Christ. A blue so deep I could drown in them and die happy.
