Chapter 13
Chapter Thirteen
Maya
Iwake with Stefano’s arm heavy across my waist and the first thin gray of morning pressing against the curtains.
For a while, I lie still and listen to him breathe.
It is a strange thing to notice—the steady rise of his chest, the warmth at my back, the careless way his fingers have curled against my stomach as if he has forgotten that I am a woman he bought, trapped, threatened, and lied to in less than a week.
Sleep has made him look almost ordinary.
It has smoothed the hard line between his brows and taken the calculation from his mouth.
I do not trust ordinary on him.
I trust it even less because part of me wants to.
The room smells of skin, warm sheets, and the faint trace of whiskey from the glass he never finished last night.
My dress is somewhere near the door. His shirt lies twisted beside the bed.
The sight of it should make me feel embarrassed.
Instead, it makes something tender and frightened move beneath my ribs, something I have spent my adult life learning not to feed.
I slip out from under his arm.
His hand closes around my wrist before my feet reach the floor.
“Where are you going?”
His voice is rough from sleep. It should not sound this different when he is tired. Less polished. Less controlled. More dangerous, somehow, because it carries no performance.
“I was getting water.”
“You were trying to leave.”
I glance down at him. One dark brow has lifted, and there is no softness in his expression now. Whatever version of him exists in sleep has already vanished.
“That sounds almost paranoid.”
“It is not paranoia when people keep trying to leave.”
The words are meant lightly. I can hear the dry edge of amusement in them. But they catch somewhere deeper than he intended, and my body goes still before I can hide it.
His grip loosens immediately.
Not enough to release me. Enough to let me choose.
“I am not leaving,” I say.
Stefano watches me for a moment, then lets go. “Then get your water.”
I pull on the robe folded over the chair, more because I need something to do with my hands than because I care about modesty now.
The small sitting area near the windows holds a bottle and two glasses, both untouched since someone brought them in.
I pour water slowly, watching the surface tremble as the room brightens around me.
Behind me, sheets shift.
“Say it.”
I close my eyes.
“You always assume I have something to say.”
“You do.”
“That confidence must be exhausting for everyone around you.”
“Perhaps.”
I take a drink, though my throat has already tightened.
The water is cold enough to hurt. Outside, Miami has not quite decided to wake.
There are headlights sliding through the dark below, a few distant horns, palms moving against the glass in the early breeze.
The city looks harmless from this height.
I wonder whether Alice ever looked out of a window like this and believed she had more time.
“I didn’t join the FBI because I believed in justice,” I say out loud. Joining up isn’t something I talk about often, but with Stefano, in this moment, it feels important. To us, to the situation at hand, all of it.
“I joined because I was angry,” I continue. “And because anger is easier to explain than grief. Anger has targets. It gives you something to do with your hands when the person you loved is gone and every room in your life still has a place where they should be.”
Stefano says nothing. That’s the only reason I keep going.
“My sister was named Alice. She was four years older than me, which meant she spent most of our childhood acting like she had invented every useful thing in the world.” A laugh tries to escape and comes out thin.
“She taught me how to sneak out without waking our parents. How to use eyeliner without looking ridiculous. How to make boxed brownies taste homemade by adding too much vanilla and pretending it was a family secret.”
I grip the glass tighter.
“She loved people too quickly. That was Alice’s weakness. She saw the best possible version of someone and believed they could become it if they were loved hard enough. She saw that in Leon.”
When I finally turn, Stefano is sitting at the edge of the bed with his forearms braced on his thighs. He has not moved closer. He has not interrupted. His face gives me nothing, but his eyes do. They have gone darker. Sharper.
“Leon didn't begin with bruises,” I say.
“He started with doubt. He told her I was jealous.
He told her our parents thought he was beneath her.
He told her her friends didn't understand their relationship. Every time she pushed back, he made her feel cruel for making him defend himself. Every time she cried, he called her dramatic.”
My voice catches on the last word.
“He made her smaller in pieces. One friend she stopped seeing. One dinner she missed because he didn't want her out late. One job she quit because he said the people there disrespected her. One apology after another until she started apologizing before he had even accused her of anything.”
Stefano’s jaw tightens.
I hate that I notice. I hate that some ruined part of me wants him angry on Alice’s behalf.
“She called me one night,” I say. “I had not heard from her for weeks. When I answered, she was whispering. I could hear him moving somewhere in the apartment, and she was trying to sound normal. She said she was tired. She said she wanted to come home.”
The glass slips slightly in my hand. I set it down before it breaks.
“I told her to leave. I told her I would come get her. I told her we would figure it out in the morning.” My breath shakes once. “She said she could not.”
Stefano stands then, but he does not reach for me.
“I thought she meant she was scared,” I whisper. “I thought she needed more time. I thought she was still deciding whether she loved him more than she hated what he was doing to her.”
The room blurs at the edges.
“I went there the next morning. He told me she had left.
He looked me in the face and said she was unstable.
He said she had been unhappy for months.
He said I didn't know her as well as I thought I did.” I swallow against the sickness rising in my throat.
“For a while, I believed that maybe I had failed her because I didn't see it fast enough.”
“Maya.”
His voice is quiet.
I shake my head. “They found her six weeks later.”
The silence that follows is different from every other silence we have shared. It has no threat in it. No game. No tension waiting to become desire.
Only the fact of what I have said.
“She had been trying to leave him,” I continue.
“That was the part that destroyed me. She had hidden money. She had taken photographs. She had dates written down. She had enough proof to ruin him if anyone had believed her. But he had money. Friends. Lawyers. A reputation that made people call him respectable while they looked at her body in a morgue and wondered what she had done to provoke him.”
Stefano crosses the room.
This time, when he touches me, his hand settles at the back of my neck with none of the claiming pressure I have come to expect. His thumb rests below my ear. Warm. Still.
“I am sorry,” he says.
The words should be simple. They should be useless.
They are neither.
I look up at him. “Don’t say that unless you mean it.”
“I do.”
“You didn’t know her.”
“I know what was taken from you.”
Something inside me gives way at that. Not all at once. Not cleanly. Just enough to make me hate the tears that spill before I can stop them.
I turn my face, but Stefano catches my chin before I can hide.
“Leon deserves to answer for her,” I say. “For Erin. For Heath. For every woman he moved through rooms like they were cargo.” My voice steadies because it has to. “I know what you think of men like him. I know what you want to do.”
His eyes do not leave mine.
“But he does not get to disappear into a grave and become a story people whisper about. He does not get to die before those children understand that he can be stopped. I need him alive.”
The tension returns to Stefano’s face, subtle enough that another person might miss it. His hand remains at my neck, but his thumb stops moving.
“You need him alive,” he repeats.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because prison is not mercy.” I wipe at my face with the back of my hand, angry at myself for crying and too tired to care. “It’s a consequence. It is people knowing the truth of what he did.”
Stefano watches me for a long moment.
Then he says, “Leon is moving through Boston.”
My body tightens.
“When?”
“Soon.”
“That is not an answer.”
“It is the one I have.”
“Stefano.”
His mouth flattens. “Five days.”
The number hangs between us.
Five days until Leon. Five days until I have to stand in the same room as the man who made Alice disappear from every future I had imagined for her.
“You are taking me,” I say.
“Yes.”
“With Raven?”
“Yes.”
“With the FBI?”
“Yes.”
“And you?”
His gaze sharpens. “What about me?”
“What is your plan?”
“You know enough of it.”
“That is not what I asked.”
For the first time since I started talking, he looks away. It is only a second. A flicker toward the window, toward the pale strip of sky growing above the city.
Then he looks back at me.
“We go to Boston. You get your answers. Raven gets her arrest.”
“And you?”
His hand slides from my neck to my waist, holding me there without force.
“I get what I came for.”
Every instinct I have tells me to push. To demand the part he is hiding. To remind him that he has not earned the right to ask for trust after everything he has done.
But five days is not enough time to win a war against Stefano Savarese.
His fingers tighten slightly at my waist. “You are certain?”
“No.”
The corner of his mouth moves.
“But I am going.”
“Good.”
I should hate the word.
Instead, I step closer and rest my forehead against his chest. His arms close around me slowly, as though he expects me to pull away. I let him hold me for one breath. Then another.
Five days until Boston. Five days until Leon. Five days until Stefano proves that he can be trusted—or proves that I was a fool to believe he ever could.