Page 28

She rose on her tiptoes and kissed the side of my lips. “No, you don’t.”

“Good.”

I held her tightly against me again, kissing the crown of her head.

The war we’d been fighting quietly for weeks was about to become louder, and I was entirely prepared for whatever the escalation demanded of me.

Whatever answer waited inside that isolated compound in the desert, I intended to be standing beside her when she finally received it. And I intended to make certain Graham paid in full for every year he’d cost her before we ever got there.

Chapter Twenty-One

Camila

The penthouse had never felt this quiet before. It was silent in a way that made me rethink asking the housekeeper to come less frequently. Nikolai had left before dawn with Yuri and four other men I recognized only by the grim set of their jaws. A few hours later, the silence started pressing against me in a way I couldn’t quite outrun. I’d checked my phone so many times by 10:00 am that the screen had started to feel like an accusation every time it lit up with nothing. By noon, I’d rearranged the same stack of papers three times, accomplishing nothing beyond keeping my hands occupied.

Pregnancy exhaustion made everything heavier than it should have been. I sat at the kitchen table with a folder of financial records I couldn’t really focus on. My mind kept circling through every possible end that today might bring—Mateo alive somewhere in that compound, Mateo already gone, Nikolai walking back through that door or not walking back through it at all. I closed the folder and just sat there.

Bianca came to visit later in the afternoon.

“You look terrible,” she said casually, setting a paper bag from the deli downstairs on the table between us like she knew I hadn’t eaten properly all day.

“Thank you.”

“I mean it in the nicest possible way.” She reached across the table and took my hand. “You look like someone carrying about six different kinds of weight at once. Talk to me.”

So I did.

All of it. I told her about the exposés, Mateo, and Graham. Then I told her about the pregnancy and the possibility of loving a man I’d once built an entire career around destroying. Bianca listened without flinching; without the shocked gasps I half expected. She didn’t interrupt once.

“We used to be coworkers at the casino,” she said quietly. “Now you’re married to one of the most powerful men in this city, pregnant, hunting a trafficking network, and somehow still the same stubborn sweetheart.” She shook her head slowly. “I don’t even know how to process how much your life has changed.”

“Neither do I, most days,” I admitted.

“For what it’s worth,” she added, “I’m proud of you. Whatever else this has cost you, you’re still doing exactly what you set out to do. You’re just doing it from somewhere more dangerous than a casino floor.” She squeezed my hand once more before letting go, and her expression told me she meant every word of it.

Then Sebastian’s name came up—I don’t even remember exactly how, most likely a passing mention of the wedding, about the way he’d sat at the back of the ceremony with those work papers folded beside him. Bianca’s whole demeanor shifted the instant I said it. She released a quick laugh.

“God, don’t get me started on that one,” she said, waving a hand like she was swatting the subject away entirely. “Unreadable. Cold. I don’t think that man has smiled once in his life.”

“You seemed pretty determined not to look at him at the reception.”

“I was busy. There was an open bar.”

She busied herself by refilling her own water glass, a motion that told me exactly how much the subject had rattled her composure.

I let the conversation drift back toward safer ground, and she followed easily, visibly relieved.

She stayed until late afternoon. When she finally gathered her things to leave, she pulled me into a hug tight enough to crack a rib.

“You have to survive this,” she said against my shoulder. “Not just for the baby. For me. I refuse to lose you now, after everything, right when you’re finally about to become the most annoyingly overprotective mother I’ve ever had to watch in action.”

“I promise,” I said, though the promise felt heavier leaving my mouth than it should have.

“Good. Because I already have opinions about the nursery, and you’re going to need someone around to override whatever excessive marble situation your husband tries to install in there.” She pulled back, studying my face one more time before she let go entirely. “Call me the second you hear anything. About any of it.”

I laughed despite everything, the sound surprising me almost as much as it seemed to please her.

“I will.”