He doesn’t answer right away. His hand has flattened against my hip, warm and deliberate now, like he’s holding me in place while his mind races ahead.
“It could.”
I push myself up a little higher on the pillow.
“I think if your father’s building an alliance with a man like Luis Restrepo, it starts with something tangible. Something that proves both sides are serious.” He lets out a breath. “Weapons would do it.”
A pulse starts beating harder at the base of my throat. “So what does that mean?”
“It means this might be our opening.” He sits up now, the sheet falling to his waist, and the lazy warmth is gone out of him completely.
I can see the shift happen—the way his shoulders square, the way his eyes go flat and focused. This is the Luca that existedbefore he washed up on my beach. The one who was trained for exactly this kind of thinking.
“How?” I ask.
“Because if that’s the first real piece of business between your father and Restrepo, it’s the one thing neither of them can afford to have go wrong.”
I sit up and pull the sheet higher around myself.
“The trust isn’t there yet.” His eyes sharpen. “Not between men like that. If the first exchange goes bad, nobody shrugs and says ‘better luck next time.’ They start asking who screwed them. Who got sloppy. Who lied.”
A sick understanding starts to form inside me.
“And if it looks like my father did...”
Luca nods once. “Then Restrepo doesn’t have to wonder whether Anton’s worth doing business with. He has his answer.”
“You think he’d retaliate?”
“I think a man like that doesn’t take a public embarrassment and move on.” Luca’s eyes hold mine. “If that shipment disappears or gets hit or goes sideways in a way that points back to your father, the alliance may not survive it. Your father might not either.”
For a second, neither of us says anything. The ocean fills the silence. I can see the outline of it now. Not a plan yet, but the first sharp edge of one. A way to turn my father’s ambition into the thing that destroys him.
Luca looks at me. “Did Nikolai say when?”
I shake my head.
“Where it was coming in?”
“No.”
“Who was handling it on your father’s side?”
“I don’t know that either.”
Luca mutters a curse and drags a hand through his hair. The idea is there now, sharp enough to see, but every edge of it keeps catching on the same problem.
We don’t know enough.
For a moment, neither of us says anything. Moonlight cuts across his shoulder, pale against his skin. I stare at the ceiling and try not to let the panic come back, but it presses in anyway, cold and steady.
And the more I turn it over, the less room there seems to be for any other answer.
“No one is going to get closer to him than I can,” I say at last.
Luca turns his head toward me, and even in the dim light I feel the change in him. Something darker than that. Something that goes still all at once, like every part of him has locked on to what I just said and hates where it leads.
My pulse kicks harder, but I keep my voice steady. “If we need to know more about the shipment, I’m the one who has the best chance of finding out.”
