Chapter 13 Angelina #2
"Not hungry, tesoro." I force softness into my voice. "I'll eat later."
"Mr. Cole didn't eat either." She points her spoon at him, milk dripping onto the table. "You're both being weird."
"Grown-up weird," I say. "Nothing for you to worry about."
"That's what you always say when something's wrong."
Dio, when did she get so perceptive?
Cole's mouth twitches. Almost a smile. I want to throw my cold coffee in his face.
"Nothing's wrong, bambina. Just tired." I stand, kiss the maple syrup off her cheek, fasten the clasp of my father's medal around my neck. The cool silver settles against my collarbone like armor, like a promise.
Protect me. Guide me. Help me survive whatever this is.
Instead, I stand. Kiss maple syrup off Chesca's cheek. Fasten the clasp of Dad's St. Christopher medal around my neck—the cool silver settles against my collarbone like armor, like a promise. Protect me. Guide me. Help me survive whatever this is.
Xander appears at the back door, keys in hand. "Ready, small fry?"
Chesca slides off her chair with exaggerated reluctance. "I want to hear about everyone's weird moods when I get home."
"No promises," I tell her.
I watch through the window as Xander's SUV disappears around the corner with my daughter inside. Only when the taillights vanish do I let myself look at Cole again.
He's still watching. Still waiting. Like he has all the time in the world.
He thinks he's won something. He thinks last night meant I'm his now. That the sex the night before sealed some kind of claim, and that switching my pills is just the natural next step in whatever twisted fantasy he's been building for seven years.
My fingers find the medal at my throat. Press hard enough to feel the saint's outline through my skin.
"I need to get ready for court," I say, and walk past him without another word.
The drive to the courthouse takes thirty-two minutes. Neither of us speaks.
Cole drives with his usual control, eyes scanning mirrors and side streets, hands positioned on the wheel at ten and two. The professional bodyguard, doing his job. As if he didn't just try to deceive me.
I stare out the window and let the city blur past.
What are you going to do, Angelina?
I don't know.
You could tell him you know. Confront him. Demand an explanation.
And then what? He admits it? Apologizes? Does that change anything?
You could call Sal. Have him handled the way Adrian was handled.
Could you? Could you really do that to him?
The question sits heavy in my chest. Three days ago, the answer would have been easy. Three days ago, Cole was just the man who watched me through cameras, the ex who left without explanation, the stranger who showed up in my living room and upended everything.
Now he's the man who held me while I cried. The man who turned me away because he didn't want to take advantage of my fear. The man who braided my daughter's hair in the morning and promised to protect us both.
The man who switched my birth control in the middle of the night.
How do those things exist in the same person?
How do you reconcile a man who says "I need you to want me when you're not afraid" with a man who tries to get you pregnant without asking?
I don't have an answer. I don't have anything except the feel my father's medal against my collarbone and the knowledge that I'm playing a game I don't fully understand yet.
Remember, figure out the rules first. Then decide.
The hearing is a property dispute. Commercial real estate, contracts and easements and the kind of dry legal technicalities that usually help me focus. Today I can barely track the arguments.
I sit behind my bench in my robes with my gavel in my hand, and I nod at the appropriate moments, and I make rulings that probably make sense, and the whole time my mind keeps circling back to a bathroom counter and a pill pack with smooth edges.
He tried to put something in your body without your consent.
"Your Honor?"
I blink. The defense attorney is staring at me, waiting for a response to something I didn't hear.
"Could you repeat that, counselor?"
He does. Something about an extension. I grant it without fully processing why, and the hearing moves on, and I move with it, carried along by the current of procedure and precedent while my thoughts churn underneath.
During the afternoon recess, I look up from my notes and see Adrian.
He's in the gallery. Second row, aisle seat, positioned with a clear sightline to my bench. There's no reason for him to be here, the DeLuca case doesn't resume until next week. He's not connected to the property dispute. He's just... present.
Watching.
His eyes meet mine across the courtroom. That smile spreads across his face, the one I remember from a hundred terrible moments, the one that came before you made me do this, cara and why do you make me so angry and no one else will ever want you, you know that, right?
My hands go cold. My throat tightens.
Don't freeze. Don't give him the satisfaction.
Cole stands against the back wall, arms crossed, attention sweeping the room in that constant surveillance pattern I've grown used to. He hasn't noticed Adrian yet. Or if he has, he's not reacting.
Two men in this room who think they have the right to control you. Two men who touch your life without asking permission.
And you're just supposed to sit here and preside over a hearing about commercial easements.
I force my gaze away from Adrian. Back to my notes. Back to the attorneys waiting for my attention.
"Court will resume in fifteen minutes," I announce, and my voice sounds almost normal. "We're adjourned until then."
I don't look at Adrian as I rise. Don't look at Cole as I walk toward chambers. I just move, one foot in front of the other, until I'm through the door and it's closed behind me and I can finally let my hands shake.
He's here. Adrian is here.
And Cole switched your pills this morning.
And someone left flowers on your desk with a countdown.
Twenty-three days.
How many threats can one woman carry before she breaks?
I sink into my chair and press my palms flat against the desk and breathe. In through the nose. Out through the mouth. The way my therapist taught me.
You're not going to break. You've survived worse than this. But have I really?
The door opens. I don't look up, already knowing who it is by the particular weight of his footsteps.
"He was in the gallery." Cole's voice is flat, controlled. "Adrian. I saw him."
"I know."
"He's not connected to this case."
"I know that too."
Silence. I can feel him standing there, waiting for something. An explanation, a reaction, permission to do whatever violent thing is coiling behind his careful composure.
I don't give him any of it.
"Court resumes in twelve minutes," I say. "I need to review my notes."
A pause. Then his footsteps retreat, and the door clicks shut, and I'm alone with my shaking hands and the ghost of Adrian's smile and the knowledge that I'm surrounded by dangerous men, and I don't know which one to fear more.
The smell pulls me out of the brief I'm pretending to read.
Garlic, sharp enough to reach me all the way in my home office, and underneath it the bitter green edge of broccoli rabe. Then pancetta, rendered fat, the real thing, not the restaurant version that tastes like bacon pretending to be Italian.
No.
I'm out of my chair before I've made the conscious decision to move. The brief scatters across my desk, pages I've read three times without absorbing a single word, my mind too busy circling the drain of this morning's discovery to focus on contract disputes.
He didn't. He couldn't possibly—
The kitchen comes into view, and Cole stands at my stove with his sleeves rolled to his elbows, wooden spoon in hand. Steam rises from a pot of boiling water. Small ear-shaped pasta tumbles through it, catching the light.
Orecchiette.
"Mr. Cole is making something Italian!" Chesca announces from the table, homework abandoned, eyes bright with the particular excitement of a child who's been promised something special. "He said it's your favorite."
Cole doesn't turn around. "It was. A long time ago."
My throat closes.
The night before my LSAT. His apartment with the broken radiator and the stove that only had two working burners.
I was so sick with anxiety I couldn't eat.
I hadn't eaten in three days, couldn't keep anything down, and was convinced I would fail and disappoint everyone and prove that I was never smart enough to begin with.
He made this. Fed me by hand when my hands shook too hard to hold the fork. Told me I was the most brilliant woman he'd ever met and the test was just a formality, just a hoop to jump through on the way to the life I deserved.
Twelve years ago. I was a girl then, not a mother, not a judge, not a woman who'd learned what men really wanted when they said they loved you.
He remembered.
Xander appears from the living room, takes one look at my face, then at Cole's back, and makes a decision I don't have the energy to argue with.
"Chesca, want to help me check the perimeter? Very important security stuff."
She narrows her eyes with theatrical suspicion. "Is this a grown-up thing?"
"Very much so."
"Fine." She slides off her chair with exaggerated reluctance. "But I want dessert later."
They disappear toward the back door. Xander's hand on Chesca's shoulder, guiding her away from whatever's about to happen.
The door clicks shut.
Cole plates the pasta with careful attention. Broccoli rabe bright against the pale orecchiette, pancetta glistening, a finishing drizzle of good olive oil.
He sets the plate in front of me. Sits across the table like we're just two people having dinner together. Like he didn't violate my trust ten hours ago. Like this isn't a calculated move in a game I'm only beginning to understand.
I stare at the dish. Then at him.
"You remembered." My voice comes out rough, scraped raw by a lack of sleep and something else I won't name.