Gives me the room.
I stay on the edge of the table and look at Dante.
His face is wrecked. The composure gone.
Dante sits in the chair with his fists still on his thighs and his breathing held too carefully, like even that belongs to me until I give it back. His eyes are red at the edges. His fists stay on his thighs. Each breath comes too carefully. Even now, his gaze stays on me.
"The man you hired," I say. "You ended it yesterday. Confirmed?"
"Confirmed. In front of you. You heard the call."
"Richard has the data. No one says where it came from. He received an anonymous tip. That's the story."
"That's the story."
"The drawer is closed. Permanently." I hold his eyes. "If you open it again, if you hide the opening, I leave. Because I'll be choosing to walk away from a man who makes decisions about my life while I'm sleeping."
"I understand."
"Say something real. Give me something besides 'I understand.'"
His jaw works. The composure is gone and what's left is raw. His hands shake against his thighs, the tremor visible from the table.
"I don't know if I can trust myself." His voice is rough, barely audible. "That's what scares me."
The refrigerator hums behind him.
"That," I say. "That's real."
I reach across the space between the table and the chair, take his hand, and turn it over. My thumb presses into his palm, where his pulse beats close to the surface.
"You broke my trust," I say. "Again. Rebuilding takes longer the second time."
"I know."
"But you told us. Yesterday morning, you walked into the bedroom and showed us the phone. You brought it into the room. You showed us the data instead of funneling it to Richard and pretending it never happened."
His pulse kicks under my thumb.
"Still, you chose to tell us." I press harder, pinning that pulse beneath my skin. "That matters. The man who raised you would never have walked into a room and handed someone the evidence of his own betrayal."
Cole pushes off the counter and steps behind Dante. He grips the back of Dante's neck, the grip Dante knows from six years. Dante's eyes close.
"You sat in that chair," Cole says quietly. "You could have stood up. Walking out was an option. You stayed." His grip tightens. "That's different from the version of you I was afraid of."
Dante's hand tightens on mine. His other reaches back and grips Cole's arm.
"Wednesday," I say. "The hearing. Richard presents the evidence. The parole violation, the letters, the campus visit, the surveillance data. We end this in a courtroom."
"And if the courtroom doesn't end it?" Dante asks.
The question he can't stop asking.
His thumb presses into the center of my palm.
"Then we figure it out together and in the open." I look at him. "My terms. All our voices. That's the deal. The only one."
He nods once.
