With the way your pulse jumps in your throat when you’re nervous. With the fact that you haven’t stopped touching your collarbone since we sat down. With the eleven different ways I’ve imagined this moment ending.
“The east wall,” I say instead. “Your initial assessment indicated structural concerns beyond the surface damage.”
She blinks. Surprised, perhaps, that I actually intend to discuss her work. As if I haven’t memorized every word of her grant proposal, every photograph she’s submitted since, every email she’s exchanged with the foundation’s administrative assistant.
Knowledge is control. And I control everything.
“The foundation is sound.” She pulls her notebook from her bag, flipping to a page covered in precise sketches and notations. “But there’s water infiltration through the original drainage system. Whoever designed the restoration in the seventies didn’t account for the shift in?—”
Rosa returns with our drinks. Violet’s usual, espresso with water and a small pitcher of steamed milk on the side. Mine, black and bitter, the way I prefer most things.
And a third cup, already prepared, that Rosa sets down between us with a pointed look at me.
“For the gentleman,” she says. “On the house.”
I meet her gaze. Hold it.
She knows nothing, this woman. But she suspects something. The instinct of prey recognizing a predator, even when the predator wears a civilized mask.
“Grazie.”
Rosa retreats. I don’t touch the cup she brought me.
Violet is still talking, her hands moving as she explains the drainage patterns, the salt crystallization, the way four hundred years of Mediterranean humidity has eaten into stone that was never meant to bear such weight. She’s passionate about this work. It transforms her, strips away the careful reserve she wears like armor.
I’m fascinated by her hands as she speaks, the way her fingers trace invisible patterns in the air, the calluses on her palms from her tools, the stain of rust beneath her nails. She’s got working hands. Honest hands.
Hands I want wrapped around my?—
“Are you listening?”
“Every word.”
She narrows her eyes. “You were staring at my hands.”
“You have interesting hands.”
“That’s a strange thing to say.”
“I’m a strange man.”
A laugh startles out of her, bright and unexpected, and she covers her mouth immediately, as if the sound embarrassed her. As if joy is something to apologize for.
Who taught you that? Who made you think your laughter was something to hide?
I add it to the list. The list of people who have touched her life and left her smaller than she deserves to be. I will find them, eventually. Learn their names. Make them understand the cost of diminishing something beautiful.
But that’s for later. Right now, I have more pressing concerns.
The vial in my pocket weighs nothing. A few milliliters of carefully calibrated sedative, pharmaceutical-grade, designed to work within minutes and leave no lasting effects. I’ve used it before, on men who needed to be transported without incident. It’s clean and efficient, merciful, even, compared to the alternatives.
Violet lifts her espresso to her lips.
My chest tightens.
Not yet.
I need her relaxed. Comfortable. The drug works faster when the body isn’t flooded with adrenaline. And despite her laughter, she’s still tense. Still watching me from the corners of her eyes, trying to solve the puzzle of my presence.
