Almost.
“So,” Ella says cautiously, stirring her coffee. “How are you… really?”
I consider lying. It would be easier. Politer.
Instead, I say, “Confused. Angry. Weirdly happy about things I shouldn’t be happy about. You?”
She snorts. “Relentlessly under-qualified for my life.”
That gets a real laugh out of me, the kind that surprises us both.
We talk about inconsequential things at first. Her work. My uncles. Books we love. Films we hate. She tells me about growing up adjacent to power without ever being allowed to touch it, how men like her father decide futures over dinner while women are expected to smile and pour wine.
“Last week,” she says dryly, “someone told me I’d make a great ‘asset’ someday. I asked if that came with stock options.”
I grin. “Did it?”
“No,” she sighs. “Just expectations. And babies. Lots and lots of babies.”
Something unspoken settles between us, recognition blooming quietly. We are very different women standing on the same edge.
For a while, it almost feels normal.
Then I notice the man across the street.
He’s pretending to check his phone, leaning against a lamppost with studied casualness, but his gaze lifts too often, tracking the café door, the window, me.
My spine tightens.
I shift slightly. He shifts too.
“You see it too?” Ella asks softly.
“Yes,” I murmur.
“I thought I was being paranoid.”
“You’re not.”
We don’t panic. We finish our coffee. We laugh louder than necessary. We pretend this is just another afternoon in New York, because that’s what survival looks like sometimes: refusing to give fear the satisfaction of being obvious.
But when we stand to leave, I feel it. That prickle along my neck. The sense of attention tightening, focusing.
“Text me when you’re home safe,” Ella says quickly, squeezing my hand. “Please. I’d…I’d love to do this again. If we can?”
“I will,” I promise. And I mean it.
Outside, the air feels sharper, edges newly honed. My guards appear with seamless efficiency, too quick to be coincidence, their presence both comforting and ominous.
The man by the lamppost is gone.
That’s worse because I’m not sure if I’m relieved or if I was being paranoid.
The car ride to meet Giovanni stretches, the city sliding past like a film I’ve already seen once but didn’t fully understand. I replay the morning. The quiet. The way he kissed me goodbye with startling but thrilling intensity.
I spot him the moment I arrive.
Giovanni stands near the entrance of the restaurant, suit immaculate, posture deceptively relaxed. But his eyes are scanning, measuring, already calculating something I can’t see yet.
