She nodded. “You’d think I wouldn’t be so stiff after sleeping most of the way here, but…”
“A bath will help.”
The bathroom was upstairs. He helped her climb the steps one at a time, his arm around her waist, her hand gripping the railing. The master bath had a deep soaking tub set beneath a window that looked out over the lake. He turned the faucet and held his hand under the stream, adjusting until the temperature was right. Warm. Steady.
She undressed while he held her steady, his hands doing the work where hers couldn’t. This time she was awake for it, present in a way she hadn’t been in Chattanooga, and the awareness changed the texture of every small movement between them. She gripped the edge of the tub and eased herself down, one leg at a time, and he kept his hand on her back until the water took her weight.
He could tell when the warmth reached her. Her whole frame softened. Her eyes closed. Her shoulders dropped. She sank until the water lapped at her collarbones and stayed there, breathing.
Isaac sat on the floor beside the tub with his back against the tile wall. She didn’t need him to hold her upright this time and he didn’t want her to think he was ogling her. She was steady on her own. He was just there. Close. Present.
She looked around the room. The tub she was sitting in could have fit three people. The tile was hand-laid, a pattern that repeated in soft grays and whites. A window above the tub framed the lake.
She shifted her gaze to the floor where he was sitting. “This bathroom has heated floors.”
He could feel the tile through his jeans. “Might.”
She pointed at the glassed-in shower next to the tub. “And that showerhead has more settings than most car stereos.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever actually counted, but yeah, there’s a lot.”
She turned her head on the rim to look at him. Her expression had warmed past the exhaustion, something almost playful surfacing beneath it.
“I assume Zodiac pays pretty fairly, but how does a man who works private security own a place like this?” she asked. Giving him room rather than putting him on a spot. “Because this bathroom alone costs more than everything I’ve ever owned, and you told me we were going to a fishing cabin.”
He pulled his knee up and rested his arm across it. This conversation had been coming from the beginning of their relationship, and rightfully so. She’d given him her father, her mother, her mission, her body’s betrayal. He owed her the same honesty.
“My family has money. A lot of it,” he said. “Old money. The kind that comes with a last name people recognize at benefit dinners and a trust fund that shows up on your eighteenth birthday whether you want it or not.”
She didn’t move. The water lapped gently against the sides of the tub.
“I grew up in that world. Private schools, country clubs, summers in places that had names instead of addresses. My parents expected a certain kind of life from me: the right college, the right career, the right marriage. A seat on the family foundation board. The whole choreographed trajectory.”
He looked at the window. The lake reflected the clouds above it.
“That wasn’t what I wanted so I walked away.” At the end of the day, it was as simple as that. “Enlisted the day I turned eighteen. My father didn’t speak to me for two years. My mother cried, but she also drove me to the recruiting station, so that tells you something about how she felt about the trajectory, too.”
“Did you like the military?”
“Yes. Loved the Army for all the reasons you’d assume I would’ve hated it. I loved just being one person in a group of people. A grunt getting screamed at by my drill sergeant just like everybody else. I had to prove myself, just like everybody else. Nobody gave two shits about my name or family.”
She nodded, the corner of her mouth kicking up. “I could see that.”
“When I got out eight years later, I was recruited by Zodiac. Code name: Leo. I built a life that was actually mine. The money’s still there—I never touched it. But I didn’t want to be defined by it. Didn’t want people to look at me and see the name instead of the man.”
“Did your parents ever get over it?”
“Yeah. I think once they saw it wasn’t just a rebellious stage I was going through, things evened out. At the end of the day, I’m their kid and they love me.”
“Good. That’s what family should be.”
He turned back to her. This was the part that mattered. The part where the shape of his past overlapped with the shape of her targets.
“I can’t help but think the world I grew up in is the very one you’re fighting against,” he said. “Galas. Charity dinners. Seven-figure donations and champagne that costs more than rent. That’s the world you move through when you work. The same rooms. The same people. I guess that’s why I didn’t mention it to you.”
She looked at the water. Her good hand moved slowly beneath the surface, tracing a line along the edge of the tub. Her expression had gone unreadable.
“You shouldn’t have worried. I don’t hate rich people. That’s never been what this is about.” Her voice was steady. Certain. “Money’s just money. It’s neutral. What I care about is what people do with the power it gives them.”
