"They're alive." His voice is quiet against my hair. "Both of them. But the law won't find them, Onyx. Not where they are."
I nod. Take a sip of coffee. Let the warmth of it and the weight of his words settle into the place where the Malone name used to live inside my chest.
The feds seized everything. The properties, the accounts, the shipping contracts, the political connections my uncle spent forty years building were all exposed. The Malone empire is rubble and my article is the wrecking ball that brought it down.
My mother would have loved that.
Sloane calls at twelve-fifteen, which means she's been awake for approximately ten minutes given her relationship with mornings.
"You're famous." Her voice is sleep-rough and delighted. "My best friend is famous and I am taking full credit because I was there from the beginning."
"You were unconscious in an alley. That's not exactly a front-row seat."
"Details. The point is I suffered for your art. Speaking of which, you owe me brunch. The expensive kind. With unlimited mimosas and a table by the window."
"Done. Saturday?"
"Saturday works. But I'm picking the restaurant because the last time you picked we ended up eating cold noodles at a place that didn't have chairs."
"It was a ramen bar. They had stools."
"Stools are not chairs, Onyx. I have standards."
Saturday arrives with the kind of warm April sunshine that makes Chicago forget it spent five months buried in snow.
The restaurant Sloane picks is a brunch spot in Lincoln Park with exposed brick and trailing ivy and a menu that uses words like "artisanal" and "hand-foraged" without irony. She's already seated at a corner table when I walk in, a mimosa half-gone in front of her, her blonde hair pinned in victory rolls, winged liner sharp enough to cut glass, cherry lipstick freshly applied. Five feet of vintage rockabilly perfection in a polka-dot dress and red heels that click against the tile when she spots me and stands.
"There she is." She pulls me into a hug that smells like Chanel and hairspray and the specific warmth of a friendship that has survived everything the world has thrown at it. "The woman who brought down the Malones."
"Technically the federal government brought down the Malones. I just wrote the article."
"Please. You wrote the article, survived two kidnapping attempts, dated a Russian assassin, and punched your uncle in the face. You're basically an action hero with better hair."
"He's not an assassin. He's an enforcer. There's a distinction."
"Sure there is." Sloane releases me, drops back into her chair, and pushes a fresh mimosa across the table. "Drink. We're celebrating."
We order eggs benedict and fresh fruit and a pastry basket that will put five pounds on us both with no guilt. Sloane catches me up on her life with the rapid-fire delivery of a woman who has been storing up six months of gossip and intends to unload every last ounce of it over brunch.
She dumped the ramen guy. Started dating a bartender who turned out to be married. Dumped the bartender. Is now seeing a tattoo artist named Marco who has "the hands of an angel and the commitment issues of a feral cat."
Her words, not mine.
"But the hands, Onyx." She waves a forkful of eggs benedict for emphasis. "I can overlook a lot of red flags for hands like that."
"No. You cannot."
"You're right, I cannot. I give it two more weeks." She grins, cherry lipstick perfectly intact despite the food. "But enough about my catastrophic love life. Show me the ring again."
I hold out my left hand. The ruby catches the late morning sunlight streaming through the window, throwing tiny red sparks across the white tablecloth. Sloane takes my hand and examines the ring the way she's examined it every time we've FaceTimed for the past four months, turning my fingers, tilting the stone, making appreciative noises.
"Still the most gorgeous ring I've ever seen. That man has taste." She releases my hand and leans back, her baby blue eyesstudying my face with the perceptive attention most people miss beneath the lipstick and the vintage aesthetic. "You look happy, Onyx. Like actually happy. Not the fake kind you used to do where you smiled with your mouth but your eyes stayed flat."
My throat tightens. "I am happy."
"Good. You deserve it." She takes a sip of her mimosa. "Now. When do I get to meet the Beast in person? And I mean a real meeting, not him lurking in a car across the street. Everybody loves a bodyguard, but he can come in and join us, ya know."
"Mm-hmm. It was his idea. He's parked across the street right now."
