Nikolai pulls into a space half a block away. He turns off the engine and sits for a moment, both hands still on the wheel.
"You're nervous," he says.
"I'm fine."
"You're nervous and you're lying about it, which is a waste of both our time." He turns to look at me. His eyes are pale blue, washed out, and they see everything. "Luca Castellano locked you in a concrete room for nine weeks. You are entitled to be nervous about sitting across a table from him."
"I'm not nervous about Luca."
His eyebrow lifts. One millimetre. On Nikolai, that's practically a standing ovation.
"I'm nervous about the part where Dom starts a war."
"Dominic is not going to start a war."
"You sound very sure."
"I am very sure. Because if Dominic starts a war, I will finish it, and he will not enjoy my methods." He opens his door. "Shall we?"
I get out. The air is cold and sharp and my coat doesn't quite close over the bump.
Nikolai walks beside me. He doesn't offer his arm, which I appreciate.
The restaurant is warm. The hostess recognizes Nikolai before we reach the desk. I can tell by the way her smile goes from professional to something more careful. She leads us through the main dining room without a word.
Dom is at the corner table. He's in a dark suit, no tie, the collar open. He sees us the moment we enter the room and his eyes go to me first, then to his father, then back to me. He doesn't smile.
Across from him, Luca Castellano is holding a glass of wine and saying something that involves a hand gesture and a smile.
The smile dies when he sees me. It goes out, the way a candle does when you put a glass over it. One moment it's there, warm and bright and charming, and the next there's nothing.
His hand, the one holding the wine, goes very still.
I walk toward the table. Nikolai is half a step behind me. I can feel the baby pressing against my bladder with every step, which is not the dramatic entrance I had in mind but pregnancy doesn't care about dramatic timing.
"Luca," I say.
He looks at me. He looks at the bump. He looks at Nikolai. Then he looks at Dom, and for the first time since I've known anything about Luca Castellano, I see him recalculate.
"Theo." His voice is steady. The recovery is impressive. "I didn't realize you'd be joining us. Dom said you were—"
"Locked in his penthouse? That's what you were supposed to think."
Dom pushes back his chair and stands. He pulls out the seat beside him. I sit. The bump presses against the edge of the table and I shift back an inch.
Nikolai doesn't sit. He remains standing behind me, his hands clasped in front of him, and the picture he makes — seventy-three years old, five foot ten, white hair, plain dark suit — should not be as frightening as it is.
Luca's two men at the bar have noticed. One of them has his hand inside his jacket. Viktor, who I now see is at the far end of the room, shakes his head once. The hand comes out empty.
"I think there's been a misunderstanding," Luca says. He sets the wine glass down. His fingers leave it slowly, as though letting go of something he might need again.
"No misunderstanding." Dom's voice is level. The voice he uses when he's decided what's going to happen and is waiting for reality to catch up.
The table is very quiet. The restaurant noise continues around us — cutlery, conversation, a woman laughing somewhere near the bar — but at this table, there is nothing.
Luca's expression is doing something complicated. "I was going to come back," he says. "With a proper offer. I wasn't going to—"
"You weren't going to what? Keep him forever?”
