His gaze sharpens. “What about me?”
“What is your plan?”
“You know enough of it.”
“That is not what I asked.”
For the first time since I started talking, he looks away. It is only a second. A flicker toward the window, toward the pale strip of sky growing above the city.
Then he looks back at me.
“We go to Boston. You get your answers. Raven gets her arrest.”
“And you?”
His hand slides from my neck to my waist, holding me there without force.
“I get what I came for.”
Every instinct I have tells me to push. To demand the part he is hiding. To remind him that he has not earned the right to ask for trust after everything he has done.
But five days is not enough time to win a war against Stefano Savarese.
His fingers tighten slightly at my waist. “You are certain?”
“No.”
The corner of his mouth moves.
“But I am going.”
“Good.”
I should hate the word.
Instead, I step closer and rest my forehead against his chest. His arms close around me slowly, as though he expects me to pull away. I let him hold me for one breath. Then another.
Five days until Boston. Five days until Leon. Five days until Stefano proves that he can be trusted—or proves that I was a fool to believe he ever could.
Chapter Fourteen
Stefano
The first report arrives before sunrise.
Omar enters my study without knocking, which means it is not routine. He closes the door behind him and lays a tablet on my desk rather than placing it in my hand. His face gives nothing away, but his shoulders do. Tension sits high between them, contained only because he has spent years learning how to keep bad news from looking like panic.
Three photographs fill the screen. The first shows a black sedan parked two blocks from the eastern gate. A man at the gas station across the road, cap low over his face, pretending to study a lottery ticket while his attention follows the security rotation. A delivery van that passes the property twice in forty minutes, slowing both times near the service entrance.
“Who?” I ask.
“Two are Leon’s.” Omar taps the first and second photographs. “The third has not been identified, but he is following the same pattern.”
“Which is?”
“Watching. Leaving. Returning with someone new.”
“They are mapping the estate.”
