My hand finds her throat again. Gently this time. I press my lips to the place where my fingers just were.
"You're alive," I murmur against her skin, and the words mean more than she knows. She's alive.
"I'm alive," she confirms, and turns in my arms to face me. Naked, flushed, leaning against the counter. She looks up at me with an expression I can't categorise — somewhere between wrecked and radiant. "And you're here."
"I'm here."
"Not running."
"Never again."
I kiss her, and it's slow this time, the urgency spent. Her fingers trace the line of my jaw, and mine rest on her hip, and we stand there in the wreckage of our clothes and her scattered buttons and a kitchen that will need serious disinfecting before anyone cooks in it again.
Which is, of course, when the door opens.
"Yo, Gabriel, Logan wants to know if—"
Adrian stops mid-stride. His eyes process the scene fast. Two naked people in a kitchen. Clothes everywhere.
His face cycles through about six expressions in two seconds before landing on pure, unbridled delight.
"Well." He leans against the doorframe, arms crossed, grinning like Christmas came early. "I was going to ask if you wanted takeout, but I see you've already eaten."
"Adrian." My voice carries the Delgado authority that used to send people out of rooms. "Get out."
"I'm going, I'm going." He holds up both hands, backing away, still grinning. "But just so you know, that's a communal kitchen. Health code violations, bro. Serious ones."
He disappears down the hallway, and his laughter echoes long after the door clicks shut.
Sera buries her face in my chest. Her shoulders are shaking. It takes me a moment to realize she's laughing, not crying, and the laughter is contagious, bubbling up from somewhere deep and clean.
"He's never going to let us live this down," she says against my skin.
"No," I agree. "He's not."
She looks up at me, still laughing, and I think: this is what I was afraid of. This exact thing. Not the sex, not the violence, not the killing. This. The laughter after. The person who stays. The life that builds around the wreckage of what you were.
32 - Seraphina
I’ve just showered the sex off my body when I tell Gabriel I need to go to Brickell.
"I'm going to see Reyes," I say. "Today. Now."
We're upstairs in our suite, and Gabriel puts down the washer he was cleaning his face with, turning to look at me.
"You want to do this today." Not a question.
"Cristian is dead. The Markovic leadership will accept our terms within hours. We have the leverage over them, so they really have no choice. The only loose thread is Arturo Reyes. By tomorrow, he will hear what happened and calculate his next move. I need to be in his office before he has time to think."
Gabriel dries his hands, slow and deliberate.
"I'm coming with you," he says.
I don't argue. The version of this plan where I walked into Reyes's office alone, performing the vulnerable widow one last time — that version died with Cristian. I don't need to perform anymore. I need Reyes to see exactly who I am.
Gabriel nods. "Give me five minutes."
He shaves and changes his shirt. When he finishes, he looks like what he is: the Delgado prince.
