Chapter 30
MARCO
The office was empty, and I was still here.
Stacks of documents were spread across my desk, every page another burden I carried for Max.
Shipments, legal loopholes, contracts that needed reviewing, people who needed dealing with.
Some lawyers handled litigation; others spent their lives arguing over zoning laws and tax codes.
I cleaned up messes before they made it to court. Before they even made it to the light.
I leaned back, rolling the stiffness from my shoulder, exhaustion pulling at the corners of every thought. I needed to get home. Needed sleep. Hours had come and gone and I still wasn’t finished. Not even close.
Then the door opened.
I didn’t look up at first. It was past midnight, and anyone with sense would have gone home by now. That left one possibility.
I caught the scent before I heard her voice. Her usual lavender perfume, mixed with something spicy. Takeout.
“What—no security?” Valentina’s voice was smug as she shut the door behind her.
I didn’t look up. “You’re not that dangerous.”
She stepped further into the room, the sound of a paper bag crinkling as she moved. “Please. I’m every man’s worst nightmare.”
No—worse. She could be every man’s dream.
I looked up at her as she placed the bag on the desk.
“Chicken shawarma,” she offered.
“I’m working.”
“You’re always working.” She pulled up the chair across from me and sat, not asking for permission. “Even machines need to eat, lawyer.”
I eyed the bag, skeptical.
I leaned back, finally meeting her eye. She didn’t look tired, but I knew she was. Her makeup was mostly rubbed off, hair pulled back like it had been an afterthought.
Still beautiful. Still herself.
“Thank you,” I murmured as I opened the bag and pulled out one of the containers.
We sat in silence for a minute, only the sound of the wrappers and the quiet hum of the building’s HVAC filling the room.
“You always stay this late?” she asked, picking at the edge of a pita.
“When I need to.”
She tilted her head. “What, you don’t get tired of cleaning up Max’s messes?”
“All I do is clean up messes.”
She chewed that over for a second. “You ever think about quitting?”
“All the time.”
“Why don’t you?”
I knew exactly why I didn’t. I didn’t have to think about it. Not really. The answer sat right there in the back of my throat.
If I quit, I’d have to leave.
If I left, I’d end up back in DC, and if I was back in DC, I’d be away from her.
I didn’t like being away from her.
I hadn’t liked it the first time, and I sure as hell wouldn’t like it now. Not after she’d wormed her way into the quiet parts of my day. Into my space. Into the way I moved through the world.
At the end of the day, the only reason I was still here—still in New York, still in this damn office after midnight—was because she was here.
Valentina.
I didn’t know what the hell I was doing with her, but I knew what it felt like when she wasn’t around. And I didn’t want to feel that again. So no, I wasn’t quitting. I wasn’t going anywhere.
“Someone has to keep an eye on you.”
“Is that your way of saying you’d miss me?”
She said it with a smirk, like she was daring me to bite but still hoping I wouldn’t. Like she was used to people turning questions like that into a joke. Or worse, nothing at all.
“I’d miss the noise,” I admitted.
She raised an eyebrow but didn’t respond, so I continued.
“The constant commentary. The trail of destruction. The way you somehow manage to rearrange an entire apartment just by walking into it.”
She leaned forward. “You don’t like me, my things, or my mirrors?”
“All of the above.”
She narrowed her eyes, but the corner of her mouth twitched. “Bold talk for someone who keeps letting me back in.”
“Not my best decision.”
“You say that a lot for someone who hasn’t kicked me out yet.”
“Give it time.”
“I have nothing but time.”
“At least make yourself useful.” I pushed a contract toward her. “Summarize that in a way an idiot could understand.”
She grinned, cracking open the lid of her food before pulling the paper toward her. “So . . . in a way you can understand?”
I shot her a look, but she just winked.
For a while, we worked in silence, save for the occasional rustle of papers, the low scrape of chopsticks against takeout containers, and the distant sounds of sirens bleeding in from the street below. It was strange. Almost . . . normal.
Then she sighed, setting her paper down. “I don’t know how you do this all day.”
I smirked. “Didn’t peg you for someone with a short attention span.”
“Depends on the task. Some things hold my attention just fine.”
“Like?”
“Wouldn’t you like to know?” she hummed.
“I would.”
“Maybe if you asked nicely, I’d show you.”
“I don’t need to ask nicely to get what I want.”
“Clearly,” she said, rolling her eyes, but her attention didn’t stay on me. It fell to the document in my hand, and I didn’t miss the way her brow twitched like she was debating whether or not to ask.
I knew she’d seen the name at the top.
Sebastian Callahan.
My fingers tightened slightly on the page—not enough for her to notice, but enough for me to feel the tension bleed into my grip.
Sebastian fucking Callahan.
The kind of man who could flirt with your wife and rob your safe in the same breath, and you wouldn’t notice until the next morning.
It wasn’t jealousy. It was the fact Sebastian existed in every corner of Valentina’s past, like a ghost who refused to stay dead.
I didn’t need to read the files to know their history. He’d been her distraction when her marriage was already a corpse, the man she’d let touch her when she was too tired to fight, and somehow, even now, even with my ring on her finger, he was still hovering.
I hated him for it. Not because I wanted to be him, but because he’d always been the kind of man Valentina noticed. And I’d never been the kind of man who could compete with that.
Once Valentina got what she wanted, once the two-year marriage was done, she’d be gone. Probably gone with him.
It didn’t matter. It wasn’t supposed to matter. I hadn’t offered her this marriage out of emotion. It was practicality. A means to an end.
I flipped the page, jaw tight, pretending I cared about the numbers in front of me.
Valentina’s attention drifted back to me again. “So,” she started, “are you actually gonna handle Callahan, or just keep shuffling papers about him?”
Of course she’d asked. She knew exactly which button to press. It was her favorite game.
I didn’t look up right away, buying myself a few extra seconds to swallow down the first response that wanted to come out—the one with teeth. “It’s a difficult one,” I admitted.
“Is it really that difficult for you? Sebastian isn’t exactly subtle. He’s loud, arrogant—exactly your type of case. It should be easy.”
I ignored the jab about my type. “Cases aren’t easy or hard. They’re either clean or messy.”
“And Sebastian’s is messy?”
“You’d know better than anyone,” I said dryly.
She scoffed, leaning forward just enough for me to notice. I wished I didn’t. “Why does it bother you so much? My past with him, I mean.”
“It doesn’t bother me that you have a past,” I said finally. “It bothers me that your past keeps showing up where it shouldn’t.”
“And that’s it?”
I hesitated. The rational side of me wanted to leave it there. To tell her it was business, nothing else. But the truth was messier, more complicated.
“It bothers me,” I said slowly, “that someone who’s done nothing to deserve your loyalty still has it.”
“You think I’m loyal to Sebastian?”
“I think,” I said, tapping my fingers restlessly on the desk, “that if Sebastian asked you for help, you’d hesitate. Not because you’d refuse, but because a part of you would want to say yes.”
She opened her mouth as if she wanted to argue, but then she stopped herself, considering. “You don’t trust me?”
I shook my head slightly. “I don’t trust him.”
“You think he’d manipulate me?”
“He already has,” I admitted. “Multiple times. And you keep letting him.”
She pressed her lips together, obviously irritated, but surprisingly, she didn’t lash out. Instead she seemed to be weighing the accusation, actually thinking it over, which was somehow more unsettling.
“So what if I do?” she finally asked, quieter this time. “It’s not like I have a long history of good judgment.”
“No,” I sighed. “But I hope by now you have better taste.”
“Is this your version of an intervention?”
“Call it whatever you want,” I said, straightening the stack of papers in front of me, unable to hold still. “But Callahan isn’t someone who deserves your loyalty.”
Her eyes narrowed slightly, curious. “And who does?”
“Someone who hasn’t already proven they’ll let you down when it matters.”
She watched me carefully, as if searching for something beneath the words. “Someone like you?”
I held her gaze. “I wouldn’t still be sitting here if I planned on letting you down, Valentina.”
She stood up slowly and walked around the desk. She leaned against the edge, half-sitting, half-standing, like she couldn’t decide how much of my space she wanted to claim.
“You really think you wouldn’t let me down?”
Her eyes stayed on mine, waiting for an answer.
If the question had come from anyone else, I wouldn’t have paused. I would’ve said something clean. I would’ve redirected. But it had come from her, and I didn’t lie to her—not when it mattered. I lied to everyone else. Max. Judges. Enemies. Myself. But not to her. At least not convincingly.
“No,” I admitted. “I wouldn’t.”
I sat back in my chair and studied her, more out of habit than comfort. There were nights when she filled every inch of space she entered. Tonight she was doing it in silence.