Chapter 6 Cole
six
Cole
The man in the charcoal suit watches Angelina exit her chambers. His smile has too many teeth.
I don't know who he is yet. But I've seen that smile before. On men who believe they own things. People. Women.
New variable. Unidentified. File and monitor.
I'm positioned with my back against the wall near the elevator bank where I can see both exits and her chambers door simultaneously.
Friday afternoon quiet settles over the courthouse.
Attorneys are clearing out early, there's a low hum of HVAC, and footsteps are echoing somewhere down the east corridor.
Angelina steps into the hallway, case files tucked under one arm, attention on her phone. She hasn't seen him yet. But he's seen her. He straightens from where he's been leaning against the wall near the courtroom doors, eyes tracking her movement.
He knows her. Or thinks he does.
The footsteps resolve into a familiar gait. My hand eases off my weapon.
Asher materializes beside me, coffee cup in hand, steam rising in lazy curls. He leans against the wall in a mirror of my position.
"Security assessment's done." His voice stays low. "Building's tight for a federal courthouse. A few blind spots in the garage we can work around."
"Defense brought in an expert witness today. Toxicology specialist."
"Noticed. Testified for about an hour. Solid credentials." He takes a sip of coffee. "Worth watching?"
"Maybe."
I file it away. Nothing actionable yet.
"Roman?"
"Istanbul footage. Eighty-seven percent gait match." Asher's jaw tightens almost imperceptibly. "Damian's chasing it."
I nod, filing that away too. Roman alive changes the calculus on several operations. Roman dead simplifies things but leaves questions we need answered.
The man in the charcoal suit steps away from the wall. Dark hair with silver at the temples. Mid-forties. He walks like he expects the crowd to part. He doesn't check, doesn't adjust, just moves forward and assumes everyone else will handle it.
That smile stretches wider as he closes the distance.
My weight shifts to the balls of my feet.
Angelina looks up from her phone.
She freezes.
Color drains from her face. White, then nothing. She stops breathing. Three seconds. Four. Her hands shake. It's barely perceptible unless you're looking for it. Then she forces her attention back to her phone with the kind of control that only comes from practice.
That wasn't surprise. That was a trained response. She's seen him before. And whatever happened, she learned to hide her reaction.
The man turns away from her like she's an afterthought. Joins DeLuca's defense team clustered near the conference room doors. Shakes hands. Laughs at something the lead attorney says. Belongs there like he was always meant to be part of this.
Angelina's not looking up from her phone. Won't risk eye contact.
My phone's already in my hand. I snap three photos, angles that will feed cleanly into facial recognition.
Years of noting every threat to her. How did I miss this one?
The same way I missed the breach in Jakarta. Three diplomats dead while I was looking the wrong direction.
Asher follows my gaze, reads the tension in my frame. His eyes narrow as he studies the man now chatting easily with defense counsel.
"New player?"
"Someone she knows."
Angelina hasn't moved. She's staring at her phone like it contains something vital, but her thumb isn't scrolling. Her shoulders are locked at an angle that's going to give her a headache within the hour.
"She's terrifying when she's focused," Asher says.
"That's why we like her."
"We?"
I don't answer. Don't need to.
The man glances back toward her one more time, that smile lingering, before following the defense team into the conference room. The door closes behind them.
Who the fuck are you?
The parking garage is nearly empty at five-thirty, shadows bleeding into weak fluorescent light. Exhaust fumes and old concrete hang in the air. I open the passenger door first—strategic positioning, controlling access points before we leave courthouse grounds.
She slides in without comment, her movements mechanical. She's still pale. Still shaking slightly.
The armor has cracks tonight.
I round the vehicle, checking sightlines. I get in but don't start the engine.
Silence fills the enclosed space. Leather seats, her perfume, mandarin and rose with something warmer underneath that I've never been able to identify. Nowhere for her to run, which means she'll have to talk to me.
Or she'll shut down completely. Fifty-fifty odds.
She's staring straight ahead through the windshield, her breath shallow and controlled. Counting, maybe. Her fingers find the St. Christopher medal at her throat, sliding the worn silver back and forth.
"Who was he?"
Her jaw tightens. "Nobody."
"Try again."
The words come out harder than I intended. Too much command, not enough patience. She doesn't respond well to commands. I know this, have watched her bristle at them for years, have catalogued exactly how her back stiffens when someone tries to tell her what to do.
Adjust. She's scared. Scared people need space, not pressure.
But I can't give her space on this. Not when her hands are still trembling.
"An old mistake." She answers anyway, her voice flat. "Someone who doesn't matter anymore."
"He mattered enough to make you stop breathing for six seconds."
Long pause. The medal slides between her fingers, back and forth. Traffic sounds filter through the windows, muffled and distant.
"Adrian." She swallows, and the name comes out like it costs her something. "Adrian Montrose."
Adrian.
The name slots into place with an almost physical click. Married. Divorced. Chesca's father, though his name appears nowhere in the birth records I've accessed.
The man who came before me, who had her when I walked away, who touched her and married her and then somehow lost her badly enough that she erased him from her daughter's life entirely.
Seven years of surveillance and I never ran his name through proper channels. Never really dug into why her marriage ended, what made her leave, why there are no photographs of him anywhere in her home.
Coward. You didn't want to know. Knowing meant admitting she moved on, that another man had her, that your noble sacrifice gave her to someone else.
I just focused on the fact that she was single. Chesca was hers. The past was filed under not my problem.
"He's on DeLuca's defense team."
"I noticed."
"Diplomatic credentials." I pull up the information I gathered between the courthouse and the garage. "Republic of Salvencia. Special Legal Attaché."
She finally looks at me, eyes meeting mine directly for the first time since we left her chambers. "It was over before you started watching. He's not a threat."
The lie sits between us, obvious and fragile as spun glass. Her reflection in the passenger window tells the truth her words deny. Lips pressed tight, breathing shallow, fingers still working that medal like a rosary.
Liar. But you know you're lying, don't you? You're not trying to convince me. You're trying to convince yourself.
I start the car.
Diplomatic immunity. The reason his information wouldn't have been readily available in my search. The kind of shield that makes a man feel untouchable. The kind of protection that lets someone hurt without consequences.
I've punched through shields like that before.
The drive home takes forty minutes through rush hour traffic. Neither of us speaks.
I use the silence to think. To plan. To run scenarios and calculate variables and build a threat profile for a man I didn't know about three hours ago.
Adrian Montrose. Diplomatic credentials. Connected enough to appear on a high-profile defense team. Watching Angelina outside her chambers like she was something he misplaced and expected to find exactly where he left it.
Possession. That look was possession. Not interest, not curiosity. Ownership.
And she froze. The woman who stares down defense attorneys without flinching, who sentences traffickers with ice in her voice, who built a life from whatever wreckage he left behind, she froze.
What did you do to her?
The question burns in my chest all the way home.
The kitchen smells like garlic and rosemary, tomatoes breaking down into sauce on the stove. Angelina stands at the counter, wooden spoon moving in slow circles while evening light slants through the windows.
Normal. Domestic. The kind of scene I watched through windows for years, aching to be part of.
Now I'm here, and she still feels a thousand miles away.
I lean against the doorway where I can see both rooms. Living room to my left. Chesca sprawled on the floor near the coffee table, homework papers scattered around her. Kitchen straight ahead. Angelina is cooking, shoulders less rigid than they were in the car, focused on something she can control.
Cooking as control. She does this when she's stressed. Channels the chaos into something with measurable outcomes.
Chesca looks up from her math worksheet, crayon paused mid-number. "Mr. Cole, do you know what seven times eight is?"
"Fifty-six."
Her eyes narrow with theatrical suspicion. "Are you sure? Because Google said it might be fifty-four."
"Google was wrong."
She giggles, gap-toothed grin lighting up her whole face. "I'm testing you!"
"And how am I doing?"
"Pretty good." She tilts her head, studying me with an intensity that reminds me so much of her mother it aches. "You're fast at math. Are you fast at other things?"
"Sometimes."
"Like what?"
"Chesca." Angelina's voice carries a gentle warning from the stove. "Let Mr. Cole breathe."
"I'm just asking questions, Mom. That's how you learn things." She turns back to me, undeterred. "Do you fight bad guys?"
"Sometimes."
"With swords?"
"Wooden ones. For practice."
Her eyes go wide, like I've just revealed the universe contains dragons and she's demanding to know where they live. The wonder in her face cracks something open in my chest.