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“Come. You can buy anything you want. Use all my cards if you need to,” I said lightly. “And Scotland has two of the finest dentistry schools.”

Her lip wobbled harder.

“I heard it’s cold and dark all the time over there,” she whispered.

I scanned the restaurant and threw caution to the wind. I moved close enough to scoop her onto my lap. She immediately curled against me, burying her hands and head in my chest. Her tears soaked warm through my shirt.

I held her close to my heart, gently rocking her, glaring at the other patrons. One word and they would find my knife embedded in their carotid artery. One knife could take at least the first nine out.

Zuri sighed, and I patted her back, and continued to calculate.

Two days for the passport. Keshishian never missed. One afternoon to buy her luggage and whatever else she wanted.

The weapons would stay behind. For the first time in years, I would board a ship carrying nothing but a passport and a woman. I did not need steel. I had learned to kill with my bare hands as a teenager, and the years since had only made them more lethal.

The ship sailed from Brooklyn. Embarkation at four. Documents checked at the terminal, bags scanned, nothing metal, nothing remarkable. Two people on a honeymoon. Nobody questions a honeymoon. I would walk her up the gangway with my hand at her back and my face as bored as I could make it.

Seven days at sea. No phones. No cartel. No one but her.

Southampton would be the true test. A uniformed officer, a stamp, a smile that had to be exactly right. After that, London. Four days, perhaps five. She would see the river and the red buses and the rain she would hate. I wanted her to have a few days of being nobody’s witness before her course began. Zero had seen to her enrolment under her new name. She would never need to know how much it had cost.

Then Scotland. The cold, the dark, the lectures. And me, wherever she was.

“You’ll stay with me?” she asked into my shirt.

“You will be tied down to me.”

Her body shook, and I froze for a second until I realised it was laughter. My body sagged. I let out a breath I had been holding for hours.

I scanned the restaurant again.

They could live.

As long as my Zuri could thrive.

Chapter 21

Zuri

Thirty seconds for my loved ones. I had written, rewritten and timed my words. There was no time for an emotional breakdown. Tau paced and crowded me before he set his sights on everything we had bought. Then he gave me space while he began to pack my suitcase essentials.

I held the worn, warm paper in my hand as I watched him. He had not fed me false platitudes.

In fact, no man except my father had ever made me feel this safe. Even Uncle had too many long hours and responsibilities in the shop. I struggled to reconcile how Tau could be so intuitive and gentle in one breath, and the man I had seen racing across the yard, yelling at us before he left a body full of men behind.

How his bullet had pierced the senator’s head before he could take Leandra and me.

I could be brave.

“Time me,” I said, my voice strong and steady.

I dialled the number I knew by heart. It rang. Once, twice.

“Hallo?”

I paused a beat. It wasn’t the way she usually answered the phone. There was none of that bright, big wallop of Auntie.

“Auntie, please listen. I only have—”