Exact.
“Still with me?” he asks.
I nod. “Still.”
He kisses my forehead. Soft. Controlled. Like affection can be a weapon too, if you use it right.
“Good,” he murmurs again. Praise like a blade being sheathed. “That’s my girl.”
I bristle at the possessive phrase out of instinct, and he feels it. His thumb brushes my jaw, gentling the edge.
“Not mine like that,” he corrects, immediate. Honest. “Mine like… I’m with you.”
That lands different.
I swallow. “I’m not used to men who check themselves.”
“I’m not used to wanting to,” he says, and his voice goes quiet in a way that makes me believe him. “But with you, I do.”
The truck cab is too small. His lap is too solid. The night outside is too big.
I rest my forehead against his again and let the weight settle.
“We’re going to have to walk back out there,” I whisper.
“I know.”
“And they’re going to try to turn this into a rumor.”
“I know.”
I lift my head. “Andyou’re still here.”
His mouth curves, not a smile, but something close.
“Yes,” he says.
I glance down at the bag, the evidence, the future, the fragile spine of a new rule we’re trying to build out of paper and recorded voices and stubborn hearts.
I slide off his lap slowly, regret and satisfaction braided together. I straighten my skirt with hands that still tremble. I tuck my hair behind my ear like I didn’t just come apart in the dark.
Luigi watches me with that steady attention that isn’t ownership. It’s vigilance. It’s care that knows the difference between holding and taking.
I check the bag again and the burners and the card I lifted from the mirror recorder. Intact. Breathing.
He starts the engine and lets it idle. The radio crackles with a driver’s chatter that means nothing to either of us. We don’t turn it off. Noise is a friendly lie to distract us from thinking about what happens if we survive.
“We have proof,” I say. “We need placement.”
“Two placements,” he says. “One to my uncle. Clean. Curated. Enough to force his hand into daylight. One to a man who hatesthe Commission enough to run a story for free.”
“Rinaldi,” I say. “The port broker who lost the north docks three years ago because he would not grease.”
“Rinaldi,” he says. “He enjoys revenge like his bourbon.”
“He will also sell us for a headline,” I say.
“He will try,” Luigi says. “We’ll let him think he has us and then give him something better. A name on the polished voice. A wire that lands on the same date as a container that disappeared.”
