"I met a witness. A civilian witness who threw a lamp at my head and then asked me if I was going to kill her, and when I said no, she asked if I was going to feed her, because apparently Kreiss's hospitality didn't extend to decent groceries."
"And?"
"And I took her to a diner. Because she was hungry. And because she asked. And because saying no to a woman who just spent a week locked in an apartment by mercenaries felt like the wrong move."
"Oh, brother."
"Don't."
"You took her to a diner."
"It was on the way."
"Nothing is on the way from Delaware to the compound."
"Some things are worth a detour, brother. She’s got a tight little ass." A pause. Longer than his usual pauses. "She's coming to the compound. Leone can figure out placement. But Claudio, she's not going in a cell. Not a guest room with a deadbolt. She's been locked in enough rooms."
The words land in my chest. I recognize them. The same instinct, the same protective impulse, the same refusal to put someone back in a cage. I made the same decision about Charlotte. Took her out of a locked room and into the world and watched her unfold from a woman in a cage into a woman who saysI love youin showers.
"I'll talk to Leone," I say.
"Thank you."
"And Emilio."
"What."
"You sound different. Whether you admit it or not."
He hangs up. I stare at the phone and think about the way he saidshe went sharpand the way he saidsome things are worth a detourand the way his voice gentled around the edges when he described a woman throwing a lamp at his head.
My brother is fucked.
I almost smile.
The compound is quiet when I get back. Past midnight. The corridors are dim, the guards running their rotations, the building breathing its nighttime rhythm. I hand the duffels to a waiting soldier, leave the management man with Carmelo for processing, and walk upstairs.
My room is on the second floor. I've lived here for twelve years and this morning I moved her into my room, from the guestroom we were in. A bed’s a bed, but I figured it was a small step… working towards the big one I want to ask her next.
To move in with me. In my place. Outside of the compound.
The room reflects that in the specific way that a room reflects a man who doesn't accumulate. Bed, desk, chair. A bookshelf with a dozen titles I've read multiple times. A workbench in the corner where I clean weapons. A closet with identical black clothing, organized by function. The walls are bare. The surfaces are clean. It's a room designed for sleeping and maintenance, not living.
Charlotte is in my bed.
She's asleep. On her side, facing the door, one hand under the pillow. Her position. The soldier's sleep. She's wearing one of my shirts, the grey one, and her hair is loose on the pillow, dark against the white cotton. Her shoes are beside the bed, toes facing the door.
At this point, I don’t think she has any of her own clothing left.
Neither do I, at the rate she’s burning through my shirts.
The sight of her in my sheets does something to my chest that I don't examine.
I close the door. Lock it. Set my gun on the desk. Pull off my boots, my jacket, Emilio's jacket that I'm still wearing because Ihaven't had time to return it and don't intend to. I strip to my boxers and stand beside the bed and look at her.
She's in my room. Not a motel. Not a cabin. Not a farmhouse in the mountains. My room. The place I've slept for twelve years, the only space in this compound that's truly mine, and she's in it. By choice. Because while I was raiding a warehouse in Maryland and shooting men and pulling pins from maps, she was here. Waiting. In my bed.
I slide in behind her. Carefully. My arm goes around her waist and my chest presses against her back and my face settles into her hair, and she smells like my shampoo and her tobacco and the warm, sleepy scent of a woman who's been in your bed long enough to change the way it smells.
