Chapter 14
MARIAH FELT the room the way a fox feels a field—every sound sharpened inside her, every shadow a question.
Voss & Vine pretended to be safe. That was the point of expensive places.
To convince you no one would bleed here.
The lighting was soft and flattering, the walls paneled in wood that smelled faintly of citrus oil, the piano doing something breathy and French.
Silver glinted, glasses chimed, laughter rose and fell. Normal. Pretty. Useless.
Leif sat beside her like calm in a suit, knees spread, one arm draped across the back of her chair so his fingers could rest at the curve of her shoulder.
It wasn’t quite a claim. It was a promise.
The lion branded in his palm lay against the wood of her chair, and the answering heat in her own mark pulsed back like a heartbeat.
He’d kissed the corner of her mouth when they sat, quick, certain, a seal laid on skin.
He’d told her she could bow out. He’d known she wouldn’t.
She sipped the wine she didn’t want and let her eyes go soft enough to pass for bored.
Nearly everyone who mattered to Leif had drifted in, one by one, until they looked like a restaurant and not a perimeter.
A couple laughing near the bar. A man too interested in the piano’s sheet music.
A bored pair at the window, one of whom was definitely not bored.
The door guard had changed twice already.
Magnus ghosted somewhere she couldn’t see, which meant he was behind her or above her, and either was good.
Her phone lay face down on her thigh. The message still burned in her head. YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO BE MINE. The pin marked this exact corner. Eight. The clock over the bar had slid past it with polite indifference. Rocco was late by three minutes, which told her he wasn’t alone.
“Last chance,” Leif said without looking at her, voice quiet enough to slide under the piano. “You walk out now, I don’t fault you.”
“I’m not a parcel,” she said. “I’m a person.” She tipped her head until her temple met the tautness of his jaw for one ungoverned second, then straightened. “And I plan on being the last person in the room who isn’t dead or arrested.”
His mouth tilted, dangerous and pleased. “Good answer.”
The door opened.
Rocco walked in with a smile that didn’t include his eyes. He wore expensive rage like a suit he hadn’t paid for. Broad shoulders, careful hair, lips he tightened when he couldn’t hit things. He moved like he needed the room to register him. Some of it did. Most of it didn’t. He didn’t like that.
Mariah didn’t look straight at him. She watched the room watch him. The hostess’s smile flickered. The bartender’s hand paused above a bottle. A couple near the door finished their glasses too fast as if their bodies wanted them to be anywhere else. The air shifted, like pressure before a storm.
Rocco saw them and altered course from the hostess stand, ignoring a hand that offered a menu. He didn’t ask before he took the chair across from them. He dragged it with a scrape. He wanted noise.
Leif didn’t look up until Rocco’s cologne reached them. Then he lifted his gaze, slow, and it seemed as though the temperature in the room dropped a degree.
“Sit,” Leif said.
Rocco sat. His pupils were too wide. He dragged his stare over Mariah like a hand she would’ve broken. “You were supposed to be mine.”
“She isn’t,” Leif said. His fingers didn’t tighten on her shoulder, but heat pulsed from his palm like a warning. “Say anything else.”
Rocco smiled. It twitched. “You can’t kill me here. Too many eyes. Too many cameras. Too much of your brand-new reputation to risk.”
“I don’t need to kill you here,” Leif said, voice soft enough to be mistaken for kind... if you were an idiot. “I just need you to understand you walked into my claws. You thought this was your trap. It isn’t.” He let that sit. “It’s mine.”
For a heartbeat Rocco almost hid it. Then something moved behind his eyes and he couldn’t help himself.
Triumph. He leaned back, opened his hands, careless and showy, and Mariah saw it.
The cuff of his jacket rode up. The thin black line of a wire tucked along his wrist and under the sleeve. He was miked.
Her pulse ticked. She tipped her glass and laughed at something only she heard, letting the movement spill her hair over her shoulder to hide her mouth. “He’s wearing a wire,” she said, voice barely sound.
Leif didn’t move, but she felt the change in him the way she felt a current shift under a boat. “I see it,” he said, lips hardly moving. “Let him play.”
Rocco crossed his ankle over his knee like a man posing for a portrait. “I loved you,” he told Mariah, like the words cost him money he wanted back. “Still do. You and me—meant. Your brother knew.”
“My brother is irrelevant,” she said, because pushing the words out of her throat was better than letting fear in. “And you loved what I could do for you.”
“What you are,” he corrected. “That mouth. That fire.” His eyes cut to Leif. “He doesn’t deserve it.”
“Talk about deserving,” Leif said mildly, “after you shoved a bomb under my table.”
“Me?” Rocco blinked, then laughed like the word was air on a bruise. “You can’t prove that here.” He leaned in, grin widening. “But you can try.”
“Take the jacket off,” Leif said.
Rocco looked down at his sleeve like he’d forgotten what clothing was. “Why?”
“Because you’re about to sweat through it,” Leif said.
For a second, anger broke past Rocco’s practiced face.
He didn’t take the jacket off. He reached under the table instead, and Mariah’s body reacted before her brain did—spine tight, thighs pressing together, fingers slipping under the napkin to close over the steak knife she’d palmed when he sat down.
Movement. Three things at once, small and loud if you knew how to hear.
The door scraped, then shut too quickly.
The piano faltered and found itself. The hostess’s laugh broke and didn’t come back.
Rocco’s free hand flicked her water glass and sent it spinning.
It toppled. The glass hit, shattered, and everyone near them flinched as water skittered across the tablecloth.
“Oops,” he said, amused. “Look at that.” His eyes never left Leif as the water ran across the linen and into Leif’s lap. “I guess accidents happen.”
Mariah lifted the knife under the napkin and set its tip against Rocco’s thigh, just below the table edge. She smiled and her voice dropped to a razor’s edge. “Don’t,” she said, the knife steady under the linen.
He jerked, eyes snapping to her face, the first real surprise she’d seen there tonight. It wasn’t fear. It was a man who’d forgotten that prey had teeth. Good.
Leif shifted, slow and deliberate, like a big cat deciding whether to continue sleeping. He dabbed at his lap with his napkin. “You wanted me wet?” he asked Rocco. “You’re gonna hate how this ends.”
Rocco’s nostrils flared. The hand beneath the table hesitated, then completed whatever it was doing. A click, tiny, confident. The lights dimmed half a notch, then came back. The pianist missed a note, cursed under his breath, and kept going.
Leif’s attention didn’t leave Rocco’s face. “Remote?”
Rocco’s mouth twitched again. “You tell me.” He leaned back and lifted his hands in a let’s-see gesture. The wire in his sleeve glinted and slipped.
Her phone buzzed against her thigh. She didn’t look. She kept the knife where it was, let it bite through his slacks just enough that he knew. He breathed out, shallow. Leif heard it. Rocco hated that.
“You think I came alone?” Rocco asked, eyes cutting to the front window and back. “You think your little men in their pretty coats can keep a city out?”
“No,” Leif said. “I think you don’t understand what happens when I decide a man won’t walk out of a room.” His voice didn’t rise. It didn’t need to. “You know what happens then?”
Rocco’s tongue touched his teeth. “He dies.”
“He learns,” Leif said. “Then he dies.”
Rocco laughed. It sounded thin this time. “You can’t touch me here.”
“Mariah,” Leif said softly.
“Yes.” She didn’t take her gaze off Rocco.
“Count,” Leif said. “How many men outside on his payroll?”
She didn’t have to rise, didn’t have to turn.
She watched reflection. The bar mirror. The gloss of a bottle.
The din-from-the-street that wasn’t quite the right shape for traffic.
“Four in a line along the curb, two posts at the alley, one in the sedan across the street on a phone he hasn’t looked up from since he got here. ” She breathed. “Two more inside.”
Rocco flinched. He couldn’t help it. “How—”
“She’s good at seeing,” Leif said. “It’s why you wanted her. It’s why you lost.”
Rocco’s throat moved. “Does she see the bomb?” he asked, all pleasant again.
Mariah didn’t blink. “If you brought a bomb, you’re the sort of man who—”
The back door slammed from the kitchen.
A server came out white-faced and shaking, hands high, a blade pressed to her ribs. The man behind her wore a black jacket that didn’t belong to the restaurant. His eyes were flat. His other hand held a pistol against her spine, covered by his coat. The room exhaled all at once.
Rocco smiled and sank deeper into his chair like a king lounging. “That would be one of mine,” he said lightly. “A very steady hand.” He tipped his head toward Leif. “Tell him to stand down.”
The knife in Mariah’s hand went cold. She kept it at Rocco’s thigh. “I just counted two inside,” she said to Leif, reminding him of what she’d seen.
“There are,” Leif said. He didn’t turn his head. “Magnus,” he said, louder. “Left.”