He crossed the room toward the small table near the glass doors and picked up a folder waiting there. The Donati contract lay inside.When he returned, Elia had settled onto the chair beside the pool, her legs tucked beneath the towel. Damp strands of hair clung to herneck.
Magnus sat across from her and slid the document onto the table betweenthem.
Her brows drew together slightly.“You want me to read that?”
He shook his head. “Not just read it. Iwant you to analyze it.”
Elia lifted the first page with careful fingers.The change in her expression happened almost immediately. Her posture straightened. The uncertainty that had shadowed her since arriving at Severin territory faded as her attention locked onto the text. Long minutes passed while she studied the document.
Magnus didn’t interrupt.He watched.
Her eyes moved steadily across each clause. Occasionally she returned to an earlier line,rereading with deeper focus.Finally she lowered the page.“It’s very thorough,” she said carefully.
“Thorough isn’t always honest,” Magnus replied.
“No,” she agreed. “It isn’t.”
She shifted slightly in the chair, the towel loosening where it had been tucked around her legs. Damp strands of dark hair clung to the curve of her throat and the hollow above her collarbone. The thin shirt molded to her breasts, the dark points of her nipples faintly visible through the soaked fabric. Magnus registered every detail before forcing his attention back to the contract.
Elia scanned another section. “This clause transfers port access rights,” she said, her voice quieter now that she was fully absorbed in the text. “But the ownership structure behind it is unusual.”
Magnus leaned back in his chair, studying her rather than the page. The early light filtering through the glass doors painted shifting reflections across the water behind her, and the faint scent of chlorine and warm air still clung to herskin.
“Explain.”
Elia tapped the page with one finger, completely unaware that the motion drew Magnus’s attention to the elegant line of her wrist.“The rights don’t move directly to the Severin family,” she said. “They pass through a secondary holding company first.”
“And?”
“That company could carry hidden liabilities,” she said. “Debt. Regulatory exposure. Anything someonewanted to bury.”
Magnus watched her carefully. Not just the words she spoke, but the confidence returning to her posture as she worked through the language of the contract. The uncertainty he had seen in her since bringing her to Severin territory had vanished the moment she began reading legaltext.
This was where she belonged.
“You learn that in law school?” he asked.
“You learn to suspect it,” she replied. “Actually proving it takes experience. Idon’t have much of that, yet.”
Yet. The single word lingered in Magnus’s mind longer than the rest of her answer. Not yet. That meant she expected to gain that experience. It meant she still imagined a future where she would finish what had been interrupted. Law school. Acareer. Alife that belonged to her rather than to the Donatis.
Magnus found that detail unexpectedly significant.
Most people brought into Severin territory arrived with fear, bargaining, or understated resentment. Elia sat across from him studying a contract with the focused intensity of a woman who still believed she would someday return to the world she’d been building before Vittorio Donati destroyedit.
That kind of resolve wasn’t weakness. It was leverage.
Magnus allowed a faint hint of approval to show.“Good.”
Elia glanced up at him then, and for a brief second the focus in her expression relaxed intosomething more personal. The shift reminded Magnus that only minutes earlier she had been standing inches from him in the pool, close enough that he could have taken her mouth if he had allowed himselfto.
The memory tightened something visceral in hisbody.
He ignored it.
“Is that why you asked me to look at it?” she asked. Then she glanced back down at the contract, her brows knitting as the implications settled into place. “No,” she added a moment later, answering herself before Magnus could speak. “Not just to test what I remember. You already knew something was wrong with it.”
“Partly,” Magnus said. He paused, watching her closely before adding in a probing tone, “The Donati sons discussed business in front of you, didn’t they?”
