Chapter 19
RETH
Ian is at the stove when I come in from the terrace. Three steaks in the pan, the smell of garlic and butter filling the villa, and he doesn't turn around when I walk in.
“She's still in the pool,” he says. Like he knew exactly where I'd been standing.
“Yeah.”
“Just so you're aware, staring at a woman from a distance is technically how this whole thing started. Might want to vary your approach.”
“Shut up.”
“I'm just saying. Growth.” He reaches for the salt. “You could try walking up to her like a normal person. Say hi. Maybe not from a rooftop.”
“I said hi.”
“On a Greek road in the dark after weeks of radio silence. Very romantic. Very normal.” He plates the steaks. “She cried on me when you were in the shower, by the way. Just so you know what a great entrance that was.”
I check the perimeter feed on my phone for the third time in twenty minutes. The villa's exterior cameras, the road from the airport, the two access points on the coastal side, the single road in and out of this part of the island. Lemnos is small enough that unusual movement registers.
I have two contacts positioned at either end of the island—not visible, not intrusive, just present—and a third watching the marina because boats are the variable you can't control from a road.
Everything is clean. Everything has been clean since we arrived.
Valeria doesn't know we're here yet. I'm making sure of it.
“It was good tears, though. Not the other kind.” He sets the plates on the counter and finally turns, leaning back against the stove with his beer. He looks at me for a moment—the easy register, the mischief—and then something shifts. Just slightly.
“Thank you,” I say, finally slipping my phone into my pants pocket.
He tilts the bottle. “For what?”
“Getting her here safely.”
“Are you gonna tell me what’s going on?”
Outside, Sophia floats on her back in the pool, arms spread wide, face to the sky like she hasn’t a care in the world. I’d sell my soul to keep it that way.
“Reth?” Ian pushes. “First you break the cardinal rule of no contact, and then all I get is a message saying I need to get her here as fast as humanly possible, with enough security to guard the Pope, and also in a way that doesn’t freak her out. Do you know how impossible that is?”
“Yeah. I—”
“And did you notice how I accomplished the impossible without breaking a sweat?”
I frown at him.
“You’re welcome, by the way. Now tell me what the fuck is going on, man.”
I pull a fist through my hair. “Valeria figured out you were in Paris.”
Ian’s entire demeanor changes. Face hardens. Shoulders straighten.
“She knew about Paris. Knows about you.”
“Jesus fucking Christ.” He sets his beer down.
“Luckily, we have you buried so deep, she can’t trace who the fuck you are.”
Ian is quiet for a long moment. The pan sizzles behind him. Outside, Sophia is in the pool completely unaware that the reason she's in Greece instead of Paris is because the woman who owns me has been watching her.
“How long has she known?” he asks.
“Long enough that moving her was the only play.” I look at him steadily. “Paris is compromised. She's not going back.”
Ian picks up his beer. Doesn't drink it. Just holds it. “She doesn't know that yet?”
“No.”
“You staying this time?”
“I can’t.” I push off the wall, start pacing, then end up in the exact same spot, leaning back. “It’s too risky.”
“You being here right now is already a risk. You can’t leave.”
“I have three days before Valeria starts her shit again. And when she does, I can’t be anywhere near Sophia.”
Ian takes a step closer, braced. “And shit’s never been this hot on our asses, man. You and I need to stick together if we’re going to protect that girl out there.”
There's something different in his voice. Something underneath all of that—raw and unguarded and slightly desperate in a way I've heard from Ian exactly once before, on a rooftop in Beirut when he thought we weren't walking out.
“I have three days, Ian. In the next three days, you and I need to figure out what our play is without her suspecting a thing. She can’t, under any circumstances, know how dangerous it’s gotten.”
“Agreed.”
I glance out at the pool, making sure she’s still occupied, then face Ian again. “We can’t have her in one location for too long.”
“She’s a smart girl, Reth. If we jet her off from one place to the other, she’ll figure it out.”
“Samuel knows.”
Ian straightens slightly. “He knows…and?”
“He’s in.”
“Fuck me. So, it’s happening?”
I nod.
“Does Mary know?”
“Not yet.” I shift from one leg to the other.
“Samuel needs time to move money around. Accounts his parents can’t trace.
Properties, exit routes. When everything’s in place, we’ll tell her.
In the meantime, he’s keeping Mary and Lucas away from them as much as he can without raising suspicion. But—”
“Of course there’s a but.”
“Valeria's been circling.” I watch Ian's expression process it. “More visits. More calls. Wanting time with Samuel and Lucas that she never particularly wanted before. Samuel thinks she's sensing the distance. Trying to close it.”
“Is she?”
“She’s sensing something. She doesn't know what it is yet.” I look at my beer. “So her instinct is to pull everything closer.”
“And that includes you.”
I set the bottle down.
This is the part I haven't said out loud to anyone. The part that lives in the sealed compartment of my life, where I keep the things that would break Sophia if she knew them and compromise Ian's focus if he knew them too well.
But Ian needs enough to understand the urgency.
“She's been running me harder,” I say. “Not just the volume of jobs. The nature of them.” I don’t have to spell it out. Ian gets it. He knows Valeria’s twisted appetite, and all he needs to know is that it’s increased.
“So, what's the play?”
“We wait. When Mary knows, we move. Fast.” I look at Ian. “I have a contingency in place for the extraction. Someone positioned to move them the moment Samuel tells Mary.”
“Not us?”
“Not us. Our job stays Sophia.” I hold his gaze. “The moment Samuel moves, Valeria is going to know it came from somewhere. She's going to start looking.” A pause. “And she’s going to look straight at me.”
Ian nods slowly. Processing. “And you trust Samuel enough to let him handle Mary without you?”
“I trust what he loves.” I look out toward the pool. “Men who love the way Samuel loves Mary don't hesitate when it counts.”
While Samuel’s busy moving assets and coming up with a well-oiled contingency plan of his own, I’m doing the same. Building a backup to a backup, a series of actions and favors called in across continents.
For years, Mary was my responsibility. It takes me finding love to realize that Samuel is now that person for my sister. He’ll take care of her, while I take care of the woman who now holds my every breath in the palm of her hand.
I turn to face Ian again. “It’s happening. And it’s happening soon. Samuel and I just need a little more time. Make sure everything is in place before we make our move. We can’t risk a half-assed plan, because half-assed plans are the ones Valeria takes as a personal insult.”
“I still think you need to stay,” Ian says. “If you leave in three days, it’s gonna break her all over again.”
My eyes find her as she gets out of the pool, the yellow bikini slicked to her skin, blonde hair wet and trailing water in a thin line down the center of her back. I didn't think it was possible, but she's even more beautiful under the Greek night than she is anywhere else.
The moon is doing something extraordinary tonight.
Full and low and closer than it has any right to be—the kind of moon that makes you understand why the Titan goddess Selene was worshipped at night.
It catches the water on Sophia’s skin and turns it silver, every droplet a small deliberate light, like she walked out of the pool wearing something the night made specially for her.
I’m not a man who believes in gods. But if I did, I would only ever ask for one thing.
For Sophia Sinclair to be untouchable by darkness. Even if meant keeping her away from me.
Ian says something beside me.
I don't hear it. “How is she?” My gaze finds his. “How is she doing…really?”
He doesn’t answer right away, which is an answer in itself. Something about the way he glances out at her, his jaw set, says he’s thinking harder than usual.
“Better.” He turns the word over like he's checking the underside of it. “The nightmares stopped.”
“What nightmares?”
“Bad ones.” He says it the same way he'd say the weather's been shit—matter of fact, no theater in it. “Sometimes she couldn’t pull herself out of it.” He drinks again.
“I've slept next to her a few times.” He holds up his hands.
“Before you get any ideas—she was crying and I wasn't going to lie in the next room listening to it.”
Something shifts in my chest.
“I'm just saying.” He empties his beer, then pushes off the stove.
“She's fine. But there was a really long time when she wasn’t. Took me weeks to get her out of that damn apartment.” Tosses the empty bottle in the trash.
“Which is why I originally hated this idea. Before I knew Mrs. Pervert was on our asses.”
“What do you mean, you hated the idea?” I straighten. “You mean the idea of me seeing her?”
“More the idea of her seeing you.”
I don’t miss it. The deeper tenor of his voice as he says that. “Is there something you wanna say?”
“No.” He grabs two beers, pops the caps, hands me one, then leans against the counter. “Yes.”
I remain silent, waiting for him to speak.
He doesn’t right away, chugs half his beer. Then, “Every time you leave, it costs her something. I know it’s not your intention, but that’s the reality of it.”
“You know I hate hurting her.”
“I do. Just be aware that I'm the one there when the bill comes due. I see her fall apart. Not you.”
The kitchen is quiet except for the last sizzle of the pan.
Outside, Sophia is sitting on the edge of the pool now, feet in the water, face toward the horizon.
Ian watches her for a second.
That second confirms it.
“You care for her.” I keep his gaze.
“Of course, I fucking care for her. We spend twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week with each other. Plus…” he points out toward the pool, “she’s… her. You know? Sophia, this little fucking light in our dark, fucked-up world. I’d have to be a goddamn wall not to care for her.”
I turn the beer bottle in my hands and let the truth settle in my chest like a blade I can’t pull out.
I should be angry. I wait for it, dig around for the clean, righteous burn. It isn’t there. Not really. Because Ian caring for her is the reason she's okay. Ian caring for her is the reason she has good days. Ian caring for her is the reason someone was in the next room when the nightmares came.
He's been doing the things I can't do.
Showing up. Staying. Being present in all the ordinary, daily, unglamorous ways that I keep leaving her without.
And he's done it well—better than I had any right to expect, better than I probably deserve—and for that, I owe him something I don't have the language to express and probably never will.
But… There’s always a fucking but.
The gratitude and the jealousy sit side by side in my ribs like two knives in the same wound. I knew this could happen. Months in Paris, two broken people sharing the same small world—grief, quiet dinners, two a.m. nightmares. Of course something would grow between them.
I just didn’t know it would feel like this.
Watching him look at her in the pool. That small, unguarded glance. The way his shoulders ease when she laughs at something he said. It tightens something ugly in my chest that has no right to exist.
She’s mine. But there’s this deep, dark space in me that whispers about how she isn’t mine. Can’t be mine. Because I’m me. Reth Hale. The man who has nothing to offer her but tears and nightmares and days of longing. I walked out and left a lollipop on her pillow like a coward’s apology.
Ian’s right. I’m not there for the aftermath. He is.
You don’t get to abandon someone and then feel possessive when someone else shows up to do the job you can’t.
I clear my throat, push off the wall, and go to stand by the counter across from him. “Thank you.”
“Oh, Jesus. Are you dying?”
“What? No.”
“Is this one of those moments where you feel an impending doom days before you die in your sleep? Because I’m telling you, a man in your line of work, dying in your sleep would be anti-climatic as fuck.”
I pull a palm down my face. “I’m just saying thank you.”
“Yeah. For the second time in one night.” Ian studies me. “So either you’re dying, or you have a brain tumor that’s eating all your non-asshole cells.”
“I’m thanking you for being there for Sophia when I can’t.”
Ian stills, silent.
“I wouldn’t trust her with anyone else.” And it’s the God’s honest truth.
Then from the doorway—bare feet on tile, hair still damp, towel around her shoulders—Sophia pads in. “What are you talking about?”
“Dinner,” Ian says without missing a beat.
She looks between us with that expression—the one that says she's clocked the quality of the silence she just walked into and is filing it away for later. Then her eyes land on the steaks on the counter and something shifts in her face entirely.
“Oh, thank God.” She crosses straight to the counter. “I'm actually going to die.”
Ian is already at the fridge. Door open, hand reaching, pulling out the mayonnaise before she's finished speaking.
Sets it on the counter beside her plate without looking.
Without being asked. An automatic movement of someone who has done this enough times that the action lives in muscle memory rather than thought.
Sophia twists the cap. Doesn't comment on the fact that it was already there.
Ian is already reaching for a spoon.
She takes it. Loads it. And I watch her drag the spoon across her steak. Then take a bite.
“I still can’t wrap my head around mayo with steak.” Ian reaches for a glass.
“You’re not allowed to have an opinion until you’ve tried it,” she shoots back, water dripping from her hair, down her collarbone.
Ian pours her wine without being asked—the right amount, not too full, the way she takes it—and sets it beside her plate. “That’s because I don’t do disgusting.”
Sophia smiles, takes a sip of her wine, and my chest does something that feels wrong.
The mayo already on the counter. The spoon already in her hand. The wine already poured. The complete absence of any exchange between them to make any of it happen.
I file it away beside everything else I've been filing tonight. Because I have no right to feel the uncomfortable consequence of sending the person I trust most to take care of the person I love most and being surprised that they became something to each other in the process.