The doorbell rings at 7:14 AM.
Chesca's halfway through her cereal, humming something from school. Sal looks up from his newspaper at the kitchen table. He let himself in at six, claiming he couldn't sleep and wanted to make sure we were settling in okay after last night. We both know he's checking up on me.
I'm on my second cup of coffee, running on maybe a few hours of fractured sleep, and my hand tightens on the mug before I can stop it.
Don't.
I know who it is. The same way I knew when I checked the locks three times last night.
"I'll get it!" Chesca slides off her stool.
"No." I was too sharp. Her face falls and guilt twists in my chest. I soften my voice. "Finish your breakfast, piccola. I've got it."
But Sal is already moving toward the door with that deceptive ease of his. Seventy-three years old and still fasterthan men half his age when he wants to be. I follow out of the kitchen. He opens it, and Cole Tanaka fills my doorway.
Dio.Did he get bigger overnight?Shoulders blocking the morning light, that same patient stillness radiating off him like he could wait there until the sun burned out. My pulse kicks hard before I can tell it not to.
"Ms. Castellano." His voice is level. Professional. Like last night didn't happen.
"The sedan was back this morning." Cole steps inside without waiting for an invitation, and something hot flares in my chest at the presumption. "Parked on Divisadero. Same plates as last night."
So I wasn't paranoid. The sedan I spotted was real.
"You shouldn't be here."
"The sedan says otherwise." His dark eyes sweep the kitchen, noting everything. Chesca finishing her cereal, Sal folding his newspaper, me in my work blouse with my coffee clutched like a weapon.
"I have security. I have Sal—"
"Sal is seventy-three." Cole's voice stays level, but something sharp edges into it. "He's good. But he's not enough. Not for this."
Sal makes a sound that might be agreement or might be offense. Hard to tell with him.
"And you are?" The words come out more bitter than I intended. "Enough?"
Something shifts in his expression. Not offense. Something older.
"I am."
The arrogance. The absolute certainty that I need him, that he's the answer to a question I didn't ask.
Except I checked the locks three times last night. I slept with my phone in my hand and the security app open, and I couldn'tstop seeing that sedan every time I closed my eyes, couldn't stop imagining what might happen if whoever was inside decided to stop watching and start acting.
You already decided, remember? Last night. You decided not to send him away.
"One week." The words leave my mouth before I've fully decided to say them. Sal's eyebrows rise, but he says nothing. "You stay in the guest wing. You don't speak to Chesca without me present. You don't enter my bedroom. And if I find out you're doing anything beyond basic security—"
My voice hardens into something that sounds almost like Judge Castellano. Like the woman who sentences traffickers and stares down defense attorneys without flinching.
"I will have you arrested. Capisce?"
"Understood."
No argument. No negotiation. Just acceptance, simple and immediate.
That's... not what I expected.
"I'm doing this for her." I jerk my chin toward the kitchen where Chesca's bowl clatters into the sink, oblivious to the negotiation happening twenty feet away. "Not for you. Not because I trust you. Because that sedan means someone's watching, and right now, you're the devil I can see."
