Chapter 6 Alexandra
Chapter Six: Alexandra
Four days since the attack, and the compound moves like a body healing from surgery. Slow, deliberate, stitched together with paranoia and caffeine.
I know this because I've been watching. From Leone's quarters, which are apparently my quarters now too, I have a partial view of the courtyard through a narrow window that doesn't open.
Every morning, I press my face to the glass and watch the changes.
New guards on the perimeter. Construction crews patching the east fence.
A burned-out SUV being towed from the courtyard, its frame still black and skeletal.
Leone's room is nothing like the guest suite they kept me in before.
No burgundy, no crystal, no orchids. a bed, a desk, a weapons case bolted to the wall, and a chair by the window that I've claimed as mine.
The sheets smell like him. I hate that I notice.
I hate that I bury my face in the pillow when he's gone and breathe him in like some lovesick teenager.
I am not lovesick. I am a prisoner who happens to sleep in her captor's bed while he takes the chair.
Every night. The chair.
He won't sleep in the bed with me. I've offered, casually, practically, arguing that the chair is going to destroy his back and he needs real rest if he's going to keep running a war.
And every night he shakes his head, sits down, stretches those long legs out, and closes his eyes like the conversation is over.
It drives me insane.
Not because I want him next to me. Not like that.
But because the refusal tells me more than a confession would.
He won't get in the bed because he doesn't trust himself.
And that means he's thought about it. That means somewhere behind those dead-dark eyes and that locked jaw, Leone Costa has imagined lying beside me, and the idea scares him enough to choose a chair.
I find that dangerous. And hot as fuck. I shouldn’t, but I do.
The first two nights in his room, I barely slept.
Not because I was scared. I've moved past scared into muddier territory, some swamp between acceptance and defiance.
I didn't sleep because I could hear him breathing.
Three feet away, in that stupid chair, his breath slow and measured even in sleep. Controlled even unconscious.
Who does that? Who regulates their breathing while they dream?
The third night, his breathing stuttered. Changed. Got shallow and fast, and I heard my name. Low, almost a whisper, pulled from some deep place he'd never show me while awake.
Alexandra.
I lay in the dark with my eyes wide open and my heart trying to crack through my ribs.
He doesn't know he said it. I'm sure of that. By morning, he was up before me, dressed and armored and gone, leaving coffee on the desk and a new stack of documents for me to analyze. Business as usual. Like the night never happened. Like my name hadn't been on his lips in the dark.
I drank the coffee and pretended I didn't hear it, too.
This morning, I'm at the desk reviewing a new stack of documents he left before dawn.
Financial records this time. Bank transfers, shell corporations, account numbers that trace through six different countries before dead-ending in places I can't pronounce. The third player. The shadow bankrolling the Castillo’s.
I've been at it for three hours, and my eyes are burning, and the numbers are starting to swim.
I push back from the desk and stretch, cracking my neck, rolling my shoulders.
My body aches from sleeping in a real bed after weeks of tension.
The deep ache that comes from finally relaxing muscles you didn't know you were clenching.
I need a break. I need air. I need something other than four walls and a locked door and the ghost of Leone's cologne clinging to everything I touch.
I knock on the door. The guard outside, not Axe Body Spray this time, a new guy with a jaw like a shovel, opens it a crack.
"I need to move," I say. "Walk. Stretch. Anything for fucks sake. I'm losing my mind in here."
Shovel Jaw stares at me like I asked to borrow his gun. "I'll check with—"
"Check with Leone, I know. Tell him if he doesn't let me out of this room, I'm going to start breaking things, and his weapons case looks expensive."
The guard disappears. Ten minutes later, Leone materializes in the doorway.
He's been up all night again. I can tell by the way he holds himself. Still rigid, still controlled, but there's a looseness around his eyes, a slight delay in his reactions. He's running on fumes and stubbornness.
"You want to walk," he says. Not a question.
"I want to not go insane. Walking seems like a reasonable step."
He considers me , then steps aside. "Stay close. Don't talk to anyone. Don't touch anything."
"Yes, sir." I give him a mock salute that earns me the tiniest twitch of his jaw.
The compound is bigger than I realized. From my window, I could only see the courtyard, but beyond it stretches a network of corridors, common rooms, a kitchen that smells like garlic and coffee, a medical wing with a steel door, and stairwells that descend into levels I suspect I'm not supposed to know about.
Leone walks beside me, matching my pace. Not behind. Beside. His hand rests on the gun at his hip, not gripping it, resting. Ready.
Soldiers pass us in the hallways. Every single one of them looks at me.
Some glance and look away fast, like they've been warned.
Others stare longer, eyes flicking between me and Leone.
I can practically hear the gears turning: That's the girl.
The one he moved into his room. The one who found the mole.
I keep my chin up and my mouth shut. Let them stare.
One of them, older, heavyset, with a neck like a fire hydrant, steps aside as we pass but lets his shoulder clip mine. Not hard. enough to remind me I don't belong here. I stumble a half step, and before I can even right myself, Leone stops walking.
He doesn't say a word. Doesn't raise his voice. turns his head and looks at the soldier.
The man goes white. Literally, visibly pale, like someone pulled a plug and drained the blood from his face. He backs up two full steps, mumbles something that might be an apology, and disappears around the corner so fast his boots squeak on the floor.
Leone doesn't comment. We keep walking.
But I notice his hand has moved from resting on the gun to hovering near the small of my back.
Not touching, just there. Close enough that I can feel the heat of his palm through my shirt.
The almost-contact is worse than the real thing.
My skin prickles where his hand hovers, nerve endings firing at nothing, reaching for warmth that isn't quite there.
I want to lean back into it. I want to feel his palm press flat against my spine, his fingers spread wide, claiming the space.
I don't.
We reach a long corridor with windows on one side, overlooking an interior garden that's more concrete than green. A bench sits beneath a sad little tree that's fighting for its life in a planter box. Leone gestures toward it.
"Fifteen minutes," he says.
"Generous."
I sit. He doesn't. He stands a few feet away, back against the wall, arms crossed. Watching the corridor in both directions. Always watching.
The almost-silence is strange. Not quiet, but muffled. Distant sounds filter through: footsteps, the hum of ventilation, a phone ringing somewhere deep in the building. I close my eyes and let the space breathe around me, trying to remember what fresh air feels like.
"You haven't slept," I say without opening my eyes.
"I've slept."
"The chair doesn't count."
"It counts enough."
I open my eyes and look at him. He's leaning against the wall with his arms crossed, head tilted slightly, watching me with that expression I still can't decode. It's not blank. Not at all. There's something behind it, something he keeps leashed with the same discipline he uses for everything else.
"You could sleep in the bed," I say. "I won't bite."
"That's not the issue."
"Then what is?"
He grinds his teeth, a hiss escaping between slightly parted lips. He looks away, scanning the corridor again, and I watch the tendons in his neck shift beneath the skin. Strong neck. Strong jaw. Strong everything. The man is built like a weapon someone wrapped in a tailored suit.
"Drop it, Alexandra."
"Why? Because it makes you uncomfortable?"
"Because it's not a conversation we need to have."
"That's exactly what someone says when they know the conversation needs to happen.
" I pull my legs up onto the bench, turning to face him fully.
"You moved me into your room. Your room.
Not another guest suite, not another guarded wing.
Your bed, your desk, your space. And then you sleep in a chair every night like you're standing guard. "
"I am standing guard."
"From a chair. Three feet from the bed. While I'm in it."
His eyes come back to mine, and I see it. That flicker, that fracture in the mask. The thing he keeps trying to bury. It's there and gone in a heartbeat, but I caught it.
"You're not protecting me, Leone. Not in that room. You're protecting yourself. From whatever you feel when you're too close."
His jaw tightens so hard I can hear his teeth grind. "You don't know what you're talking about."
"I know exactly what I'm talking about. I've been watching.
You reroute operations so I won't hear people scream.
You check the kitchen logs to make sure I'm eating.
You brought me documents so I'd feel useful instead of trapped.
And every night, you sit in that goddamn chair and stare at the ceiling because lying next to me would mean admitting something you'd rather die than say. "