“Because it was true and also because wine makes you sentimental.” She crosses to me. Does that thing where she grabs my face. “We can do this. We’ve been performing our whole lives. This is just one more show.”
“This is different.”
“I know.” Her voice softens. “But we don’t have a choice. We go. Be seen. Act normal. Then come home and start building the case.”
I look at her. At this woman who’s been reading my coffee grounds since we were teenagers. Who bought a murder board and charged it to Dom. Who’s in this with me even though it could get us both killed.
“Okay,” I say finally. “We go. We perform. We survive.”
“We survive,” Alex echoes.
Neither of us sounds convinced.
The water is rising. My dream told me so. Alex’s interpretation confirmed it.
We’re building a case for a woman who isn’t even missing yet. Tracking a killer we can’t name. Investigating crimes we can’t report.
And in two hours, I have to sit across from the only father I’ve ever really had and pretend everything is fine.
We’re building a case for a ghost.
And Monday, I have to go back to work and smile at Dom like I don’t know what he is.
Like I don’t know what I’m becoming.
Eleven
“THERE THEY ARE!”
Dimitri Archangelis’s voice booms across Aegean Dreams the moment we walk through the door. Not just loud—DIMITRI loud. The kind that makes tourists jump and regulars smile into their moussaka because they know.
Sunday dinner.
The girls are here.
The restaurant heat hits after coming in from the January cold. I’m freezing and sweating at the same time. Can’t regulate. Can’t adjust.
The ring in my pocket feels like it weighs a hundred pounds.
Or maybe that’s just guilt.
Bouzouki music plays from hidden speakers. The smell of lamb and oregano and something sweet baking. Conversations in Greek and English overlapping, blending, impossible to separate.
Aegean Dreams on a Sunday is controlled chaos—exactly what we need.
Exactly what I can’t handle.
“My girls! My beautiful girls!” He’s already crossing the dining room, arms wide, that enormous energy radiating off him like heat. “You’re late!”
We’re not late. We’re exactly on time. But Dimitri operates on his own clock where we’re either early—suspicious—or late—also suspicious—but never just on time.
Alex and I are used to it.
“Baba.” Alex melts into his hug first. Full-body, no hesitation. The kind of hug that saysyou’re safe now.
Then Dimitri turns to me.
He’s really the only father I’ve ever had, so when he hugs me it’s with his entire soul. It’s like a hug from home and it feels like a reset. His cologne—Old Spice and oregano—wraps around me. Strong arms that built this restaurant from nothing. Hands that have kneaded dough for thirty years.
