He stops when he sees me. He stands in the living room entrance and looks at me, curled into the corner of his pristine,velvet, antique sofa with a book in my lap and my bare feet tucked beneath me.
"What happened?" I ask.
"Business."
"Bad business?" I ask, coming to stand, bracing myself for I don’t know what.
He crosses to the bar cart. Pours himself a measure of golden whisky, drinks half of it in one swallow. "A deal fell through. A contact made promises he couldn't keep. There will be unfortunate consequences."
I step towards him. "What kind of consequences?"
His eyes find mine, and what I see in them is the man Grace warned me about. The one who doesn't tolerate disloyalty. The one whose consequences are not metaphorical.
"The kind you don't need to know about," he says.
He watches me cross the room the same way he watched me cross the room at the dinner, with total attention and a stillness that belies the intensity underneath.
I take the glass from his hand and set it on the bar cart. His fingers flex where the glass was, then close into a loose fist at his side.
"Don't decide what I need to know," I say. "I'm not a civilian you're protecting from the ugly parts. I chose this. All of it."
His jaw tightens. "You chose security. Legacy. A name."
"I choseyou. The security and legacy and name are inseparable from who you are, and who you are is a man who makes consequences happen. I don't need to be shielded from that. I don’t want to be shielded from that."
He stares at me. I can see the war happening behind his eyes, the discipline fighting with a raw, primal need.
"Claudia." His voice is rough. Low. "I have spent my entire adult life making sure the people close to me are insulated from the worst of what I do. My brothers know. No one else. That’s how I keep the people I care about safe."
"And I'm telling you that I'd rather be unsafe and informed than safe and ignorant. I watched my father's world collapse because he kept secrets from the people who were closest to him. I will not live like that again."
He raises his hand and touches my face. His palm is warm against my cheek, and his thumb traces the line of my cheekbone. I lean into his hand because I can't help it, because every time this man touches me the rest of the world goes quiet.
"You're not what I expected," he says.
I sigh. "What did you expect?"
"Someone who would flinch."
"I don't flinch."
"No." His thumb moves to the corner of my mouth. "You don't."
He drops his hand. Steps back. The distance opens between us like a wound, and I want to close it so badly that my body actually aches.
"Sit with me," he says, and walks to the sofa.
We sit. The lights from the garden glitter beyond the windows, and the house is quiet except for our breathing.
"I'm afraid of one thing," I say. I don't plan to say it. The words emerge from a place beneath strategy or calculation, from the raw and honest center of who I am.
Rovin turns his head and waits.
"I'm afraid of being powerless again. Of waking up one morning and discovering that everything I've built has beentaken because someone else decided I don't deserve it. That's what happened with my father. One day we had everything, and the next we had nothing, and I had no say in any of it. I was cargo. Collateral. My life changed overnight because of decisions made by my father, and I couldn't do anything but watch."
My voice is steady, but my hands aren’t. I slide them beneath my thighs and focus on the pressure of my palms against the fabric.
"That's why I came to the dinner," I continue. "That's why I chose you. Because the kind of power you have can't be taken by a newspaper or an investigation or public opinion. It's structural. It exists because you built it and you defend it and no one can vote it away."
