“I’m observing,” I snap, fingers flying across the keys. “There’s a difference. One is creepy. The other is investigative.”
A rare curve touches the corner of his mouth. It’s not a full smile—Alessio Costa doesn’t do anything halfway—but it’s close. It’s the first time he’s looked like something other than a weapon since I forced my way into his orbit.
“And what has your investigation yielded?” He finally turns, leaning back. The movement strains his bicep against the fabric, the caduceus tattoo on his forearm peeking out like a dark promise.
“That you have a very intense relationship with that screen,” I say, spinning my chair. I kick my feet out and cross my ankles. I’m wearing one of his oversized hoodies, pulled carefully over the bandage on my arm, and leggings scavenged from the compound laundry.
I look like a college student pulling an all-nighter; he looks like the man you hire to make people disappear. “Also, you haven’t blinked in ten minutes. Are you sure you’re human, Alessio? Or did the Costas build you out of spare parts and spite?”
He chuckles. The dry, raspy sound makes my belly tighten. “Spite was the primary ingredient. The rest was just luck.”
“Luck is a myth,” I say, voice dropping. “We make our own outcomes. Like right now. I’m making the outcome where you tell me why you’re still wearing that gear. Are you expecting a breach, or do you just like how it makes your shoulders look like they were carved out of granite?”
Alessio’s pupils swallow his irises. That predatory heat—the kind that makes me want to kneel and run at the same time—flares. He stands, and the room shrinks. He towers over me, a wall of dark intent, but I don’t pull back. I’ve spent my life running from things that go bump in the night. Now, I want tobe the thing the night is afraid of, as long as I’m standing next to him.
“I like the way you look at me when I wear it,” he murmurs. His fingers brush my jaw. The touch is light, a devastating contrast to a man who breaks bones for a living. “You have this look in your eyes. Like you want to climb me.”
“Maybe I do,” I challenge. My heart hammers against my ribs. “What are you going to do about it, Costa? You’re the one who brought me into your vault. You’re the one who put me in front of your brothers and called me part of the operation. That’s a lot of talk for a man who’s letting a computer do all the work.”
He doesn’t waste words. He grabs the arms of my chair and pulls me toward him until my knees are tucked between his thighs. The movement is swift, dominant. He leans down, face inches from mine, then reaches around me to hit a sequence on the laptop. His chest presses against my shoulder.
“The decryption is finished,” he whispers into my ear, breath hot. “But the data isn’t going anywhere until you read it.”
The screen displays a list of files. Ten years of my life, summarized in digital folders. My brother’s name is in there. The money that paid for his life is a string of numbers waiting to be found.
The weight hits. The cold, hollow ache that started the day I got the call about Curtis is right there, behind a glass wall I’ve finally shattered.
A tremor starts in my hands. I clutch the edge of the chair, but Alessio sees everything. He doesn’t offer platitudes. He doesn’t tell me it’s going to be okay. He just shifts, moving into my space, and wraps his large, scarred hands over mine. He squeezes, grounding me.
“You don’t have to look tonight,” he says, voice thick. “The trail is real, Amara. Vane isn’t a ghost anymore. We have a place to cut.”
“I have to,” I whisper, throat tight. “I’ve spent more than three thousand six hundred days wanting to see the name of the man who signed the check. If I don’t look now, I’ll never stop looking.”
“Then we look together,” he says.
He pulls his chair beside mine and turns me toward the screen, one arm braced along the back of my seat, his other hand settling over mine on the trackpad. His chest presses warm against my shoulder. It’s total exposure.
We scroll. We click. We find the file.
Contract 4409-Delta.
I click. A PDF opens. It’s a simple invoice. Forty thousand dollars. A transfer routed through a Cayman shell and an Atlanta intermediary to the man who killed Curtis. At the bottom lies the digital signature. A. Vane.
It’s just letters. Pixels. But it represents the end of my world. I wait for the explosion of rage, for the fire. Instead, there is only a flat, heavy numbness. The fight has been so long.
I lean my head back against his shoulder and close my eyes. “That’s it,” I breathe. “That’s all his life was worth. Forty thousand dollars. A number small enough to fit in one clean column.”
Alessio’s arms tighten. He buries his face in the crook of my neck, stubble grazing my skin. “His life was worth everything. They are the ones who are worthless. They’ll pay for pretending a life could be priced.”
He stays like that, holding me while the reality sinks in. For once, I’m not running. I’m not searching. I’m sitting still long enough to feel the cost.
The tension bleeds out, replaced by a different kind of heat. It’s slower than the first time. Not a desperate need to feel alive, but a deep, aching desire to be known.
I turn in his arms, straddling his lap. The hoodie is thick, but the hard heat of him is unmistakable, the ridge of his arousal pressing against me. I frame his face with my hands. His eyes watch me with raw devotion.
“Alessio,” I whisper.
“I’m here,” he says, a gravelly promise. “You stayed,” he says. “I still don’t know how to survive what that means.”
