Her jaw tightens. Her hands clench at her sides. She looks at me like I am a ghost, which I suppose I am. A ghost she buried twelve years ago, now standing in her living room as if he has the right.
I don't have the right. I know this. I surrendered any claim to her when I walked away "for her own good," making choices about her life without her input, deciding what she could and could not handle.
But I am here now. Because we think someone is killing judges. And whatever she feels about my presence, whatever fury, whatever betrayal, whatever old wounds my face reopens, I won't let her die because I was too much of a coward to face her.
The silence stretches between us, heavy with twelve years of absence and seven years of secrets.
Salvatore's voice fades to background noise.
I let my voice drop low and controlled. The first words I have spoken aloud to her since I was twenty-three years old and stupid enough to believe leaving was the noble choice.
"Hello, Angelina."
three
Angelina
Cole Tanaka is standing in my living room.
The thought keeps circling, refusing to land anywhere that makes sense. Because the Cole I remember was lanky and awkward in his own skin. The guy who hunched over computer science textbooks and blushed when I touched his hand across the library table. The guy who kissed me like I was something precious and then walked away like I was something he could survive losing.
This man is not that boy.
Broad shoulders strain against his black shirt, and his forearms show a scar I don't recognize, pale against his tan skin. He stands like someone who learned to be dangerous. Military, then. He actually went through with it. All those conversations about duty and service that I thought were just talk, just a young man trying to figure out who he was.
He figured it out. And then he left me to figure out who I was alone.
He watches me with the stillness of someone who knows exactly when to strike. My hindbrain screamsdanger, every nerve firing at once. The same survival response I'd have to any threat in my space.
That's all this is. Biology. Nothing more.
"No." My voice comes out sharper than I intended. I turn to Uncle Sal, desperate for an ally even though I know I won't find one. "Absolutely not. He needs to leave."
"Angelina." Sal's tone carries that warning I've heard since childhood—the one that meansyou're embarrassing yourself, tesoro."This is serious. The pattern that they told me about—"
"I don't care about the pattern." The words come out too fast, too raw.Get it together."I want him out of my house."
Cole hasn't moved. Hasn't spoken since saying my name in that low voice that shouldn't affect me after twelve years but does anyway. It slides under my skin like muscle memory, like my body forgot to stop responding to him even when my brain learned better.
His gaze drops slowly down my body. Sleep shorts. Bare legs.
The thin long-sleeve shirt I threw on for comfort suddenly feels like nothing at all. The fabric clings in ways I didn't think about when I was just reading in my living room, and I'm painfully aware that I'm barefoot and underdressed while he's fully clothed and probably armed.
Goosebumps rise on my arms, the damp May cold seeping through the cracked window, nothing more.
Keep telling yourself that.
One arm wraps across my stomach like I can hold myself together through sheer force of will. He tracks the movement, those dark eyes returning to my face with something that looks like hunger before he controls it.
Good. Let him want. Let him choke on it the way I choked on his absence.
"Kade sent him personally." Sal's voice drops into command territory—the voice that doesn't accept arguments. "Centurion Protection Group is the best private security in the country. You know this."
"Then have him send someone else." My nails dig into my arm. "Anyone else from their team. I don't care if they send someone who speaks in grunts and communicates through interpretive dance. Just nothim."
"He stays." Sal's jaw tightens. "At least tonight. We'll discuss alternatives tomorrow if you insist, but for now, he stays."
I open my mouth opens to argue, to throw them both out because this is MY space and I get to decide who invades it—
