Chapter 4 Angelina #2
"We need to talk about that booster seat."
"After court." It's not a question.
"You said tomorrow." I keep my voice low enough that the other parents won't hear. "It's tomorrow. Where's my briefing?"
Cole's eyes stay on me. "We're still awaiting confirmation."
"Confirmation of what?"
A pause. Too long. "That you're a target."
The word lands like a stone in my chest. Target.
"A target of what? The sedan?"
"The sedan is surveillance. Someone watching you." His jaw tightens. "The question is why. And whether it connects to something larger."
"Something larger." I hate how my voice sounds, thin and reedy. "That's not an answer."
"It's what I have right now. When we know more, you'll know more."
I want to argue. Want to demand answers right here in the school parking lot with parents streaming past us and my daughter's laughter still echoing in my ears.
But I'm due in court in forty-seven minutes, and Judge Castellano doesn't show up late. Judge Castellano doesn't let personal chaos bleed into professional duty.
Judge Castellano is a mask I've worn so long sometimes I forget there's anything underneath.
The conversation dies, and I get in the car without another word. But the word stays lodged beneath my ribs like a splinter.
Target.
The elevator at the Federal Courthouse is packed.
Nine other people. Ten with Cole pressed against my back. The doors slide shut and the car lurches upward, and suddenly there's not enough air, not enough space, not enough—
Breathe. Breathe, tesoro. Count the floors.
Someone shifts. An elbow catches my ribs.
I flinch before I can stop it. My body remembering what my mind tries to forget—crowded spaces, no escape route, his hand on the small of my back steering me where he wanted me to go, his voice in my ear telling me to smile, to behave, to stop embarrassing him in front of his colleagues—
Cole's hand closes around my elbow. Steady. His palm warm through my blazer. Not pushing, not pulling—just there.
The touch cuts through the memory like a blade through fog. I'm in an elevator. I'm going to work. I'm not twenty-six anymore, not pregnant, not trapped in a marriage that's slowly crushing me.
I'm here. I'm safe. I'm—
The elevator stops on four. Three people exit. The pressure eases, but Cole's grip stays, and my skin burns where he's touching me, and I can't tell if I want to pull away or lean into the warmth.
That terrifies me more than the crowd does.
"You can let go now." My voice comes out controlled. Judge Castellano, back in place.
His hand drops immediately. "My apologies."
The elevator empties. We're alone. Three floors to go.
"Don't do that again."
"Understood."
I should leave it there. I don't. "I don't need to be handled."
"No." Something flickers across his face. "You do not."
The doors open on twelve. I step out without looking back, but I feel him behind me.
He's watching. He's always watching.
I don't know yet if that's a threat or a promise.
The DeLuca hearing runs long.
Four hours of objections and evidence disputes and hollow-eyed family members in the gallery. The mother of one victim sits in the front row, clutching a photograph I can't see from the bench. Her daughter's face, probably. The girl who won't come home.
I keep my expression neutral. The mask firmly in place.
But underneath, something aches. Something always aches during these cases.
Do your job. Feel it later.
Cole sits in the back of my courtroom like a statue. I don't look at him, I can't afford the distraction, but I feel him there. That patient stillness. Those dark eyes tracking every person who enters and exits.
At 2:47, the prosecution calls Dr. Victoria Lockwood.
A blonde woman in mid-forties, with credentials that take two minutes to read into the record. She takes the stand with the practiced ease of someone who's testified dozens of times, settles into the witness chair, and describes the compound found in the victim's system with clinical precision
"A synthetic opioid derivative," she explains, her voice calm and professional. "Designed to suppress respiratory function while maintaining consciousness. The victim would have been aware of what was happening to her. Unable to call for help. Unable to fight back."
The mother in the gallery presses a hand to her mouth. A sound escapes, half sob, half keen, that she immediately smothers.
Don't react. Don't you dare react.
I keep my face neutral. Make a note on my legal pad. Pretend my hand isn't shaking.
A strong witness. Prosecution's best asset. The kind of expert testimony that makes juries weep and defense attorneys sweat.
I don't look at the back of my courtroom. I don't need to. I know he's there, still and watchful, and I hate how that knowledge sits in my chest like something warm.
Stop it. He's security. That's all.
"Court will reconvene at 9 AM tomorrow."
The gavel comes down, and I escape to my chambers before anyone can corner me with questions.
When I get up to leave, Cole materializes at my door like he's been there the whole time and shadows me through the marble hallways, down the elevator, across the parking garage. Neither of us speaks. The silence feels like a held breath.
The drive home blurs past in fragments: red lights, pedestrians, the familiar turns I could navigate in my sleep. Cole's hands steady on the wheel while I stare out the window and try not to think about Victoria Lockwood's clinical description of a girl dying while fully conscious.
Unable to call for help. Unable to fight back.
Chesca barrels into me the moment I walk through the door, chattering about her spelling test and the drama on the playground and how Uncle Sal let her have two cookies instead of one. I hold her tighter than usual, breathing in her little-girl smell of playground dirt and strawberry shampoo.
She's here. She's safe.
Dinner is pasta, something easy I can make on autopilot while my mind runs in circles. Chesca sets the table without being asked, her new responsibility since she turned eight, and I pretend not to notice Cole watching us from the living room doorway.
Now that the dishes are done and homework is spread across the counter, the evening has settled into something that almost feels normal.
Almost.
Cole sits in the living room with a book, and the casualness of it makes my skin crawl.
This isn't normal. None of this is normal.
"Mom." Chesca drops her pencil with a dramatic sigh. "This doesn't make sense."
I wipe my hands on a dish towel and lean over her shoulder. Subtraction with regrouping. Third-grade math designed by people who clearly hate both children and parents.
"You have to borrow from the tens column, remember? Cross out the five, make it a four—"
"But WHY?"
Cole's voice comes from the living room. "Common Core has claimed another victim."
Chesca giggles. The sound is bright and unexpected, and something in my chest cracks at the edges.
I bite the inside of my cheek, but the smile escapes anyway.
Stop it. Stop softening toward him. He hasn't earned it.
"Finish the last three problems," I tell Chesca, forcing sternness into my voice. "Then bath, then bed."
"Can Cole read me a story?"
The question hits me like cold water.
"No."
"But—"
"I'll read to you. Like always."
Her face falls, but she doesn't argue. Just bends back over her worksheet, pencil scratching against paper.
I glance at the living room. Cole's watching me over the top of his book. Something unreadable in his expression. Like he expected this. Like he's willing to wait.
I look away first.
I hate that I looked away first.
It's bedtime and Chesca's in her current favorite pajamas, the purple ones with cats. Her teeth are brushed and I've tucked under the constellation comforter she picked out herself. I sit on the edge of her bed, smoothing hair from her forehead, and breathing in the lavender scent of her shampoo.
This is what matters. This is what I'm protecting.
"Mommy?
"Mm?"
"Is Cole going to stay forever?"
I stop breathing for a moment.
"No, piccola." I keep my voice gentle and steady. "Just for a little while."
"Why?"
Because someone might be trying to hurt me and I can't protect you alone. Because I'm terrified and exhausted and I don't know what else to do.
"Because sometimes grown-ups need help with things. Like you need help with your subtraction homework."
She considers this with eight-year-old gravity. "I like him. He's funny."
He's dangerous. "He's here to help."
Her eyes flutter. "Mommy?"
"Yes?"
"That man is the pigeon man."
Everything stops.
"What?"
"I just remembered. From the park." Another yawn, longer this time. She's fading fast. "By school. Sometimes he sits on the bench and feeds the pigeons. He's really nice to them and they're getting really fat." A sleepy giggle. "Like little balloons with feet..."
Her voice trails off and her breathing evens out.
I stare at her. At the nightlight casting butterfly shadows across her ceiling. At the constellation comforter and the stuffed rabbit tucked under one arm.
My hand shakes when I pull it back from her forehead.
He sits on the bench. He feeds the pigeons. He watches my daughter smile at him like he's safe.
For how long?
I stand. My legs feel strange. Disconnected from my body.
How long has he been watching her? How long has he been watching us?
I walk out of her room on autopilot, pulling the door to the angle she prefers.
Cole is in the hallway.
Of course he is.
He stands at the top of the stairs, expression unreadable, like he's been waiting for me. Like he knew this moment was coming.
"How long?"
Two words. All I can manage.
His expression doesn't change. "Angelina—"
"How. Long." My voice shakes. My whole body shakes. "How long have you been watching my daughter?"
His jaw tightens. Something shifts in those dark eyes, not guilt, exactly, but something adjacent to it. Something that looks almost like grief.
"We should talk downstairs."
"No." I step toward him, and he actually takes a step back. Good. "We should talk right here. Right now. How long?"
The silence stretches. My pulse hammers in my ears.
"Seven years."
The admission hits me like a punch.
Seven years. Seven years. Chesca is eight. He's been watching since she was—
"You should sit down."
"Don't tell me what to do." But my legs are shaking, and the hallway seems too narrow suddenly, the walls pressing in. "You've been watching us for seven years? Since she was a baby? Since—"
"Since I joined CPG." His voice is calm. Too calm. "Since I had access to the resources. Since I could keep you safe without—"
"Without what?" The laugh that escapes me sounds unhinged. "Without telling me? Without asking? Without giving me any choice?"
"Yes."
Just that. No excuses. No justifications.
"You watched my daughter grow up through a camera lens." The words taste like acid. "You watched me. What? struggle? You didn't—you never—"
"I wanted to."
Three words. Quiet. Raw.
"I wanted to, every single day. I wanted to knock on your door and tell you I never stopped—" He cuts himself off.
Breathes. When he speaks again, his voice is controlled, that infuriating calm back in place.
"But I couldn't. Not without compromising the surveillance. Not without putting you at risk."
"At risk from what?"
"We should talk downstairs."
I want to scream. Want to hit him. Want to demand answers right here in this hallway with my daughter sleeping ten feet away.
But Chesca is sleeping ten feet away.
And this conversation, whatever it is, whatever it's about to become, isn't something she should hear.
I push past him toward the stairs. My shoulder brushes his arm, and heat sparks through me, and I hate it, hate myself for feeling anything other than fury.
"Fine," I bite out. "Downstairs. And you're going to tell me everything. Every single thing you've been hiding. Or I swear to God, Cole, I will make sure you never work in this city again."
I don't wait for his response. Just head down the stairs, each step feeling like I'm descending into something I can't come back from.
Behind me, his footsteps follow. Patient and measured.
Like he's been waiting for this moment for seven years.