"Copy," Juno’s voice came back, smooth and cool. "Is the site clean?"
"Trace removed," I said, glancing at the terrified kid in the Fiesta. "Message delivered."
"Come home, Mateo," Juno said. "Before the storm breaks."
He wasn't talking about the weather.
The storm broke exactly forty minutes after I stepped back into the penthouse.
I stood in the kitchen listening to the silence of the apartment shatter.
"You kidnapped her?" Rowan’s voice started low, a vibration of pure disbelief, and escalated quickly into a frequency that could cut glass.
She was standing in the middle of the living room, holding her phone like a weapon. Stephen was sitting on the sofa, looking calm but alert. Juno was leaning against the mantelpiece, swirling a glass of something amber.
"We relocated her," Juno corrected gently.
"You moved her to a secure facility in Manchester without consulting me!" Rowan stepped forward, her face pale, her eyes blazing with that incandescent rage I’d seen at the stadium. "I am not a client, Juno. I am a partner. You do not move my family without my consent."
"We didn't have time for a committee meeting," Stephen said, not looking up from his tablet. "Vance’s scout was sitting outside her door. He had a line of sight into her living room."
"I would have handled it!" Rowan shouted. She wasn't vibrating with anxiety now; she was shaking with fury. She looked magnificent and terrifying. "I have protocols! I have a safe contact in Surrey. I could have arranged a transfer thatdidn't involve anambulanceshowing up in the middle of the night and scaring her half to death!"
"Your protocols rely on civilian cooperation," I said, stepping out of the kitchen.
Rowan spun on me. "You." She pointed a finger at my chest. "You were there. You went there and you didn't tell me."
"I secured the perimeter."
"You breached my trust." Her voice cracked. "I explicitly told you, if my family is involved, I make the call."
"And if you had made the call," Juno said, his voice cutting through the noise, "your mother would still be sitting in that house while you drafted the perfect email."
Rowan turned on him. "Excuse me?"
Juno pushed off the mantelpiece. He didn't look ethereal now. He looked sharp.
"You analyze," Juno said, walking toward her. "You weigh the risks. You check the legal liabilities. You would have spent four hours finding a perfect solution, Rowan. Your mother didn't have four hours."
"That is not your decision to make!" Rowan screamed. "My mother is not an 'asset' in your game. She is a person. And you treated her like cargo!"
She was hyperventilating. The scent of her distress, peppermint burnt by acid, was flooding the room.
"We treated her like a target," Juno snapped. "Because that is what she is. We acted. You hesitated. That is why you agreed to work with us."
"I didn't?—"
It happened in a split second.
The argument pushed Juno. I saw his jaw tighten, his composure fracture under the weight of Rowan’s pain. He stepped closer to her, intending to soothe, intending to dominate the narrative, but the stress redlined his system.
His scent spiked.
It wasn't the white tea and sandalwood he usually smelled of, it was burnt sugar.
Sharp. High-pitched. Clawingly sweet.
It was the scent of distress. But it wasn't normal distress. This smelled like a bakery burning down. It smelled likeneed.
