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My anger toward Salvatore weakened into something more painful.

I found him at the kitchen table in Montana long after midnight, the blue light from his laptop cutting exhaustion into his face. A white page bearing a small trident symbol rested beside his hand. He closed the computer when I entered but not quickly enough to make the movement casual.

“Come to bed,” I whispered. Henry had finally stopped crying, and my body ached with the fragile fatigue of new motherhood.

Salvatore covered the page with his palm. “Soon, baby.”

“Is something wrong?”

His eyes moved toward the window before returning to me. “Something has been wrong for a long time. I’m trying to learn how many people will get hurt if I fix it.”

I believed he meant us.

The memory released me slowly, leaving Poseidon beneath my hands and the trident he had once hidden finally given a name.

He had not been deciding whether to protect Henry or pursue the Society. He had been searching for a way to protect everyone trapped inside the machinery. Every answer created another circle of innocent people who could be punished for possessing it.

I touched Reagan’s name. “Salvatore wanted me to call her.”

Rurik’s expression hardened. “We don’t know that.”

“He put the number inside my file.”

“He put it beside Nikita and Poseidon. It could have been a contact he intended to call himself.”

“Then why preserve it after he knew he might die?”

“Because dead men leave incomplete instructions.” His voice roughened. “You are searching his silence for permission because you trust him more than you trust me.”

“Yes.”

The answer hurt him. He concealed it almost immediately, but I had begun to notice the brief spaces before his control returned. Rurik loved me in a way neither of us discussed because naming it would require a response I couldn’t give. I would not make his feelings cruel by pretending they entitled him to occupy the place where Salvatore remained.

“This isn’t about choosing him over you,” I said. “Salvatore knew something neither of us does, and he expected this file to reach me when the danger returned. If he left a number, I have to believe there was a reason.”

Rurik studied me for several seconds before reaching inside his coat. He placed a secure phone on the table but kept his hand over it.

“If the number is monitored, dialing it confirms the file survived,” he said. “It may confirm you have it. If Poseidon owns the routing system, security precautions will only delay the trace.”

“And if we don’t call?”

“We investigate Reagan Jessop another way.”

“How long will that take?”

His silence answered.

Time had been the one thing Salvatore believed he possessed until men took it from him. I would not honor his caution by repeating the delay that had left his work unfinished.

I held out my hand.

Rurik released the phone.

The number rang once.

A woman answered without greeting. Her voice was calm, low, and stripped of any detail that might tell me her age or where she was.

“He told me you would call. Meet me tonight at 9 PM. Red Duck Restaurant, Chinatown. Come alone.”