“Hey.” I grab his arm. Nothing. “Vitale.”
Still nothing.
I step directly in front of him, one hand raised to his jaw. The touch seems to reach somewhere the words didn’t. He stills. Those dark eyes find mine and whatever’s burning in them shifts—controlled, banked, put away.
He looks at me for a long second.
Then he wraps a hand around my wrist and pulls me away from the scene.
I should wrench my hand back. I don’t.
He walks us to the far end of the corridor before releasing me, and I find my back against the wall with him standing entirely too close. But this isn’t like before, when the drunk man had me cornered. This is different.
I’m not afraid of Matteo Vitale right now, and that’s the most frightening thing about this entire evening.
His breathing is evening out. Mine isn’t.
“You didn’t need to do that,” I say.
“I know.”
“I was handling it.”
“I know that too.”
He says it without condescension, which somehow makes it worse. I look up at him and find him already looking at me.
Not like he’s assessing weakness, not like he’s running calculations. Just looking. Like I surprised him and he hasn’t finished deciding what to do about it.
I hate him. I need to remember that. I have spent years building a case to dismantle everything he’s spent his life constructing.
“You should go,” I say, and I make sure it comes out even.
“I should,” he agrees. He doesn’t move.
Neither do I.
The silence between us has a texture to it now, which is thick, charged, and deeply inconvenient.
“This is a terrible idea,” I say, and I am absolutely talking about the elevator I’m about to get into.
Something shifts in his expression. Not a smile exactly. An acknowledgment.
“Yes,” he says simply.
I push off the wall and walk toward the elevator. I hear him follow.
The elevator doors close.
Neither of us has pressed a button yet.
I stare at the panel. He stares at me.
I can feel that specific brand of attention that I’ve been unsuccessfully pretending not to notice all night.
“I want to be clear about something,” I say to the panel.
“By all means.”
