Chapter 2
Caden
The sweep confirms what I'd expected and gives me one thing I hadn't.
The study window: latch worn smooth from repeated use, a mark in the dust on the sill where something has rested more than once.
Someone has been in that apartment before the note.
Patient. Professional. Waiting for something specific, not fishing.
Consortium wouldn't warn her; she's right about that, and I trust her because she's lived inside that world long enough to know its grammar.
Which leaves Morozov. And if it's Morozov, this isn't punishment for a dead lieutenant.
It's recovery. Something Dominic hid in her name without telling her.
She follows me through the apartment at a careful distance, watching me work. I let her.
She's already in the kitchen when I finish the last room.
Two glasses of whiskey on the counter, one on my side and one on hers, her at the far end of the island with her hands wrapped around the glass. She pours without asking and then she registers what she's done and says nothing about it. Just drinks.
I watch her mouth when she drinks. Her lips. Her throat as she swallows.
I pick up my glass.
We go through the access questions, the list for Marco, the study latch. Standard debrief. The whole time I watch the things her body is doing that her face isn't — the glass held a little too tight, the deliberate distance of the island between us, like she's measured it and decided it's enough.
I want to go around it. I want to take the glass out of her hand, back her against the counter, make it very clear that the careful management she's practiced her whole adult life is not something I'm going to need from her.
I stay where I am.
Barely.
When I look up she's watching me. It’s what someone looks like when they've spent years not reaching for things you want because reaching has never once worked.
That's going to change.
I hold it. She holds it back.
At the door I stop. Don't turn.
"Mrs. Ferraro."
I leave before she can answer.
***
I call Vance from the car.
"The study window shows repeated access. Professional, patient. They're waiting on something specific. I think Dominic hid something in her name. If I'm right, they'll come back for it."
"How do you want to handle it?"
A rotating patrol won't cut it. Whoever this is has already slipped building security twice without a flag. Remote monitoring has the same gap. There's one option that closes everything.
"I move in. Guest room. I want eyes on that apartment until we know what they're looking for."
A pause on the line while Vance decides how much to say about that.
"I'll clear it with the client," he says finally.
"Of course you will."
I end the call.
The city moves past the window and I think about her mouth and the whiskey glass and the four feet of counter she's put between us like that will be enough if I decide it isn't. I think about what sound she makes when someone finally gets past the wall — not through it, not over it, but close enough and patient enough that she opens it herself.
No one has gotten there. Eight years and a man who owned her on paper and never once looked at what he actually had.
His loss.
She's going to be mine. Not a decision I've made like a line item — something that locks into place when I look at her across that conference table, solid and done before I've finished crossing the room. I'm not built for soft or slow. I'm built for knowing what I want and not stopping.
I want her. The composure and the fury under it and the way she pours whiskey for men she doesn't trust because her hands need something to do. I want to be the last man she ever pours it for.
She’s mine.