"Strategically, I may need you where I can see you." I let the truth slide in behind it. "And yes, you’re growing on me."
"Like ivy."
"Like a boil."
Her smile is small and lethal. "Careful. You might have to cut yourself."
"I plan to cut other people."
"You still haven’t answered me about Vegas," I say, not letting it slide. Not this time. "Nobody outside the family was looped in. No emails. No calls. Just texts."
Her brow lifts, innocent as a blade. "What?"
I watch her. Really watch her. The timing. The calm. The audacity. "You hacked my phone."
She scoffs softly. "Please. Like you didn’t bug mine."
"I bugged yours after you married into a war zone," I counter. "That’s due diligence."
"And this," she says sweetly, "was initiative."
I exhale through my nose. "You accessed a secure thread."
"You left the door unlocked."
"I did not."
"You absolutely did," she contradicts, ticking it off on her fingers. "Old kernel. Lazy redundancy. And you still reuse that encryption that was retired weeks ago."
I stare at her.
She tilts her head. "Are you mad?"
"No," the answer surprises me more than her. To save face, I add, "I’m recalibrating."
We leave the room, and my men survey the hall. I walk her past the nurses’ station with a discharge wristband that shouldn’t exist and a pace that saysdon’t ask. We take the elevator down to the garage, where three SUVs are waiting for us. Ana stops and arches a brow in a way that makes her appear like royalty. "Overcompensate much?"
"We're playing a dangerous game." I caution. Usually, I travel with one, but with her, I'm not going to take any risks.
"Sometimes one car is easier to fly under the radar."
"Sometimes three cars are needed to get out."
She shakes her head and holds out her hand, "In that case, I need a gun."
She's right. I've watched her use one too. With an exaggerated huff, I tell one of the guards to hand me a gun. He doesn't hesitate; he opens the storage compartment in the front, and several handguns lie readily inside. He gives me a questioning glance as his hand brushes the Desert Eagle Mark XIX, and I nod. Let's see how capable Ana is. The Desert Eagle is one of the most accurate handguns, but also one of the most powerful, and not easily wielded by a woman.
He hands the gun to me; it feels cold and stubborn in my hand, the slide a blunt slab that looks like it could double as a doorstop. I glance at her. I’m thinking she won’t be able to move the slide. Not because she’s a woman, but because her hand is bandaged, because the bruise under the tape is fresh and hot, and because the thing in myhand is built to resist lazy fingers. It demands strength and patience. It demands practice. But I'm also curious. I watched her kill four men in the span of a minute, and I want to know how capable she is.
She watches me handle it like she’s cataloguing an animal, measuring the weight, the balance, the way my thumb finds the seam. When I hold it out, she doesn’t take it like a challenge or a favor. She takes it like a question she already knows the answer to.
Our fingers brush when she closes on the grip; the contact is thin and electric. For a second, the world contracts to the heat where skin meets skin. I almost forget the garage, the SUVs, the other men.
She shifts slightly, strips the magazine free with practiced ease, and fingers it like a jeweler appraising a stone, thumbs the base with a motion that’s all economy and no show. She works the action next, not fumbling or theatrical but precise, the way someone who’s spent too many hours making sure things that can kill people behave exactly as they should. There’s a quick, professional rhythm to her checks: efficient, silent, and clinical.
Watching her do it is like seeing a private talent revealed. My blood does something I have trouble naming; my vision narrows to the slide of the gun and the way her hands rake it back, effortlessly. She makes violence look neat. It hits me hard and stupid and unbearably immediate — turned-on in a way that surprises me—hard as rock, bone-deep, the not-so-subtle proof that power can be very, very attractive when wielded with confidence.
She snaps the magazine back in with the same no-nonsense ease and tucks the gun into the tote. Her eyes meet mine for a beat, cool and knowing. The little smile that follows is all warning and invitation, says:Bring it on. Her eyes flick to mine, the same sharp, amused look she wore when she called me out for not knowing Voronin.
