The city lights reflect in the windshield like a thousand watching eyes.
“Then they learn,” he says calmly. “That we don’t belong to them anymore.”
I look away.
“Talk to me,” he says.
“The scar on your shoulder?” I ask. “Tell me.”
“Your brother didn’t die by my hand,” he says again. “I was there to pull him out. The first shot took my shoulder and spun me. The second took his heart.”
“You were sent to collect him alive?”
He nods. “A third crew crashed the meet. The kill was the second shooter. Not Moretti.”
“Who?”
“Different barrel. Different man,” he says, making a reference.
“The polished voice on the recording. The one behind Adrian?”
“Perhaps. I’ve been thinking of a name since our first listen. They wanted me wearing the blood. The men in the tower were sent by someone.”
“Their orders read like a subcontract. Ghost number. Not Adrian’s language.”
“Polished voice,” he says.
“Yes,” I say. “The wires will match the week he called for the port. Slush offshore in the Canaries. You can detect the lawyer in the routing.”
He smiles without pleasure.
The shaking is gone. What replaces it is a need. It is about proof. I am alive. He is alive. We’re in a square of darkness that feels like privacy. The bag rests between my knees and the night leans in. I take the breath I have been saving, and I move to crawl into his lap.
He shifts the seat back and drags me across the gap like the cab was built for this.
It isn’t graceful. It isn’t meant to be. He catches me by the hips, and his mouth meets mine. Copper sits on my tongue. He’s been punched more than a few times tonight. We both make the same sound. Relief over pain.
He kisses me like the cove all over again, careful and hungry, only now there is no water to hold us up. There’s only him and the soft noise the truck makes when we move against it.
I grind against him. His breath hitches and I think, yes, this, this is mine. It unknots something below my ribs. He presses closer. His palm slides to my backside, and I feel the hardness of him strain against my wet panties.
“I don’t have protection.”
“Oh,” I say, getting his meaning.
“You decide,”he says.
That somehow wrecks me more than his touch. I want to take everything right now, him raw, because adrenaline makes hunger feel like truth. But I also want us alive more than I want relief. And alive means I have to be smart.
I rest my forehead against his and breathe.
“Not yet,” I whisper.
His eyes darken, but he nods immediately. No argument. No sulk. No punishment.
“Good,” he says, and it is praise again. Not for denial. For discipline. For choosing tomorrow. “We aren’t safe yet. And your father already wants to kill me.”
I laugh. “Imagine. Us having a baby.”
