"Luca. Brennan's been spotted near the south side." He says it casually, the way he delivers all operational updates, but the tension in his forearm where it rests against the granite tells a different story. "We're closing in on the warehouse. Should be ready to move soon."
Brennan. The name hits my bloodstream and the safe little world I've built inside these brick walls shudders. I've been livingin a bubble. Stolen t-shirts and rooftop roses and a man who leaves water on my nightstand before I know I'm thirsty. I've let myself forget that the reason I'm here in the first place is because men with my last name want me dead or sold. Brennan's name is the pin that pricks the bubble's skin, and for a moment the real world rushes in with all its sharp edges.
But then Kon slides my plate across the counter, his scarred fingers brushing mine, and the bubble seals itself shut again.
That's what he does. That's what this place does. Makes the danger feel distant. Makes safety feel permanent. And I know better than to trust that feeling, but God help me, I don't want to stop.
"Be careful," I say, and I mean it with every cell in my body.
His dark eyes find mine over the counter. "Always. That’s why we take our time. We don’t move until we are certain we are delivering the death blow. Figuratively or otherwise."
Later, alone in our bedroom, I open my laptop. The cursor blinks in the Syndicate Research folder. The files sit there, unchanged, the last entry dated four days ago I think. Before the Malone dossier. Before I learned all the truth. Before everything shifted on its axis.
I stare at the folder name. My fingers hover over the keys.
I should delete it. Every word in that file is a betrayal of the man who has taken me into his life and shown me love and kindness.
But my fingers won't move to the delete key. Journalist instinct, survival instinct, the voice of a woman who has learned the hard way that trust is a luxury you pay for in blood.Insurance. Just in case.
My father has really done a number on me.
Just in case of what? Just in case the man who offered to let me destroy him turns out to be lying? Just in case everyone I’ve met since coming into Kon’s life is fake?
The arguments ring hollow. They've been ringing hollow for days.
I close the laptop, tired to the bone. I'll deal with it tomorrow. Right now, I want to just have one more day where I don’t have to deal with one problem or another.
The afternoon sun paints the rooftop garden in shades of amber and gold. I've been coming up here more and more, drawn by the quiet and the growing things and the way the city sounds different from six stories up, distant and irrelevant, a world that can't reach me here.
It is unseasonably warm for October. And I notice Kon has covered the roof with an enormous plastic dome, trapping in warm air while the outside is cool.
Kon is already on the rooftop when I push through the metal door, crouched beside the rose trellis with a pair of pruning shears in his massive hands, his dark hair loose today, falling past his shoulders in a way that softens the hard lines of his face. He’s changed since breakfast. Now he's wearing a plain white t-shirt stretched across his broad back, the barbed wire tattoo visible through the thin fabric, and dark pants with the knees dusty from kneeling in soil.
He looks up when the gravel crunches under my feet. His dark eyes track me across the rooftop, the corners crinkling in the sunlight, and the barest curve pulls at the edge of his mouth. Notquite a smile. The Kon equivalent, which I'm learning to value more than any full grin.
"You're thinking loud," he says, turning back to the roses, his shears making precise cuts at forty-five-degree angles, each snip deliberate and clean.
"I'm always thinking loud. It’s how my brain works, I guess." I sit on the edge of the chaise lounge, the cushion warm from the sun, and pull my knees to my chest. A light breeze works its way through an opening on the other side of the dome. Hits of herbs carry along the current from the garden beds. Basil and rosemary and the sharp green smell of tomato vines, mingling with the heavier sweetness of the roses.
“Does the dome keep the garden and flowers blooming all year?”
He nods and then asks, "What's the story today?"
I consider deflecting. Wrapping the truth in a quip and tossing it back with a sardonic smile. The old Onyx would do that. The old Onyx would never let a man see the tender thing rising in her chest.
I decide not to be the old Onyx.
"I'm thinking about my mother."
He stills his movements. The shears pause mid-cut, his hand suspended in the air, his broad shoulders tensing beneath the white cotton. He doesn't turn or push. He simply waits for me to continue, giving me the space to continue or retreat, the patience of a man who has learned that silence is sometimes the most generous thing you can offer.
"She used to garden." My voice is quiet, carried by the breeze, dissolving into the warm air. "Before everything got bad. We hada little plot behind our house in Queens. Tomatoes that never grew tall enough, herbs she overwatered, flowers she could never keep alive." A smile tugs at my mouth, small and aching. "She'd spend hours out there with dirt under her fingernails and a sunburn on her nose. Said it was the only place she could hear herself think."
"What happened to the garden?"
"We moved. My father's business expanded. We got a bigger house, hired staff, became the kind of family that has gardeners instead of gardens." I pick at a loose thread on the chaise cushion, twisting it between my fingers. "She never seemed happy after that. I thought it was the move. The distance from her friends, her neighborhood, the life she knew." My throat thickens. "Now I know it was everything else."
Kon sets down the shears. Stands. Crosses the gravel to the chaise and lowers himself beside me, the cushion dipping under his weight. His shoulder presses against mine, solid and warm, and he doesn't say anything. Just sits there. Present. A wall I can lean against if I choose to.
