Chris’s jaw tightens.
“I never told anyone about that.” I stare at him. “I gave some guy my card while I was waiting for a latte. How do you—” The pieces click into place. “You were watching me.”
“Surveilling,” Chris says, like the word choice matters.
“You were stalking me.”
Chris doesn’t deny it. His jaw tightens, a flicker of embarrassment crosses his face, or maybe guilt.
“I didn’t know who he was,” he says finally. “Some guy chatting you up, getting your number?—”
“He wasn’t getting my number. I gave him my card. For therapy.” I shake my head. “Oh my god. You were jealous.”
Wyatt makes a sound that might be a suppressed laugh. Chris shoots him a look.
“You’re unbelievable,” I say, but there’s no real heat behind it. After everything else, the disappearance, the bruises, the secrets, finding out he was watching me from the shadows before we reconnected barely registers. It’s almost comforting, in a fucked-up way. At least some things are consistent.
“Can we get back to the part where there’s an active threat on your life?” Chris says flatly.
“Fine. But we’re revisiting this later.”
“Looking forward to it.” He scrubs a hand over his face. “So what’s the connection? If he’s not the assassin, what does he want with you?”
“He came to me because he couldn’t get to Vicente any other way.”
Both men go still.
“What do you mean, ‘get to Vicente’?” Chris’s voice drops.
I take a breath. This is the part I’ve been carrying since Darius kicked the door in.
“He’s Vicente’s son.”
Chris blinks. “What?”
I hesitate to share the details Vicente and Arturo told me in session. But then I remember: they signed a contract. The Agency has recordings of every session. Chris and Wyatt have probably heard all of this already, even if the details didn’t stick.
“His mother is Lola’s sister, Selena. She came up from Mexico for a family visit back in ‘95, when things between Vicente and Arturo were already falling apart.” I keep my voice steady, clinical. Deliver the information like a case summary, not a bomb. “Vicente left the next morning. Apparently not before sleeping with Selena.”
Lola. The woman Vicente and Arturo both loved, whose murder drove them apart for thirty years. Her sister.
“Vicente doesn’t know Rafael exists. Rafael came here to warn him about the contract. He has intel we don’t. That the Yakuza sent one of their own to assassinate Vicente and Arturo.” I pause, let that sink in. “He couldn’t get past Vicente’s security, couldn’t get anyone to listen. So he found me.”
Wyatt shifts his weight. “He told you all this? In twenty minutes?”
“He told me enough.” I meet his eyes. “I’ve spent years learning to read people. He wasn’t faking. He was desperate and exhausted and gambling everything on a stranger. That’s not the profile of an assassin. That’s the profile of a son trying to save his father’s life.”
“Or it’s the profile of someone very good at manipulation.” Chris’s voice is hard, but I can hear the crack underneath. “You don’t know what people are capable of when they want something badly enough.”
“I know exactly what people are capable of.” The words come out sharper than I intended. “I also know that you chased off the one person who knows the assassin’s identity. He was about to tell me when Darius kicked down the door. So maybe, instead of arguing about whether I can read a room, we should figure out what to do next.”
Chris scrubs a hand through his hair. For a moment, the exhaustion shows through. Not just physical, but deeper. The weight of too many secrets held too long.
“Fine,” he says. “We’ll loop in the principals. Let them decide if they want to meet their long-lost relative.” He moves toward the kitchen. “I need coffee. Anyone else?—”
“Chris.”
He stops. Turns.
