Chapter 13
Sabrina
My stomach growled at the absolute worst moment—right when I thought I had the emotional upper hand.
So now we’re sitting across from each other in a tiny, dimly lit pizzeria just a few blocks from Volkov Towers.
It’s old-school, cash-only, and packed with the scent of roasted garlic and bubbling cheese.
Theo—Ego, whatever—knew the place without checking a map. Of course he did.
He’s the kind of man who knows where to find comfort in a crisis.
So, yeah. Him. Me. Dinner.
And a detailed explanation of my idiot brother’s tech-fueled dumpster fire.
That’s why we’re here. Not because I’m softening.
Definitely not because I’m starting to like the way he looks at me.
Or the way his hand always seems to find the small of my back.
Like it did the second we got in the elevator.
Or how his voice gets gravel-deep every single time he calls me Angel.
Sure, Sabrina, tell yourself that.
“Here you go,” the server interrupts my thoughts, sliding a steaming pizza onto the table.
It’s glorious—charred crust, rich tomato sauce, glistening with mozzarella and ribbons of fresh basil.
“Oh my God, that smells divine,” I breathe, practically wiggling in my seat.
My stomach makes a second appearance, growling like it’s auditioning for a horror movie.
Theo chuckles.
“You’re fucking adorable,” he murmurs, reaching for the pie. “Lemme get a slice for you, Angel. It’s hot.”
There it is again. Angel.
My pulse speeds up, and my heart starts going—bum bum, bum bum—double time.
He hasn’t stopped calling me that, and I haven’t told him to.
I should. I probably should.
But I don’t.
He serves me a slice, careful like it’s a ceremony. Like he’s offering more than food.
A silent apology in the form of carbs and cheese.
I let him.
The wine he ordered shows up in two short glasses—not the fancy stemmed kind, just thick old tumblers that remind me of holidays with my dad when he’d let me sip from his cup and pretend I was a grown-up.
It’s bold. Full-bodied. Dry enough to make me pause.
“Good?” he asks.
I nod.
“Yeah, it’s good.”
“Sorry I didn’t ask. It’s one of my favorites, and I wanted to share it with you,” he confesses.
“I like wine. And I happen to prefer my red wine dry and my white wine sweet.”
His mouth curves, slow and knowing.
“Noted.”
We eat in a lull of semi-civil silence, the kind that feels less like a pause and more like a truce.
My anger’s still there, simmering somewhere beneath my skin, but it’s cooling.
Mutating.
Because if I’m honest?
I don’t think he meant to hurt me.
Theo is not subtle. He’s not smooth. He’s not a manipulator.
If anything, he’s a walking contradiction—blunt and intense, but weirdly tender when he thinks I’m not looking.
And maybe I’m tired of pretending I’m not affected.
When the pizza’s half gone and my second glass is dangerously low, I finally say it, “Will you tell me everything you know about all this?”
He sits back, jaw tightening, then leans in and gives it to me.
All of it. No sugarcoating.
Marco got involved as a freelance programmer and used his expertise to find a backdoor into a secure server for some German outfit, a Hammerfall Technologies, that wasn’t supposed to exist.
And Marco, being Marco, saw an opportunity to skim access keys—encrypted credentials that let people bypass high-level firewalls.
Really, he saw dollar signs. And like the weasel he is, he sold his ill-gotten wares to some rival of that Hammerfall Technologies.
He got paid.
A lot.
But he didn’t deliver them all.
And now, he disappeared.
And worse, the people he stole from and the people he crossed both think I have the rest.
I blink, stunned.
“That’s insane.”
“I just learned about the buyers while we were at the office. Both parties think Marco sent everything to you to hold on to. Or, at the very least, that you can lead them to him.”
“I haven’t spoken to him in months. Maybe a year. The last time I saw him was at our parents’ funeral. And the last time he called was to ask me for money. I sent him two hundred dollars.”
“I know,” Theo says. “We’ve been tracking his comms.”
I pause mid-bite. “So, you’ve been watching me this whole time?”
“No. Not until you filed that complaint with the Verona PD. And Angel, we’re not watching. We’re protecting.”
My eyes narrow.
“Is that what you call not telling me the truth?”
He winces.
“Okay, I deserve that.”
“You do.”
Another beat.
“But I also mean it when I say this isn’t just a job to me, Angel. Not anymore.”
My breath catches.
Because he’s looking at me again—really looking.
Like I’m not just some assignment or collateral damage in Marco’s idiocy.
Like he sees something in me.
“Sabrina,” he says, voice low and raw. “I know I screwed up. I know I hurt you. But I swear to God, I want to fix this. Not just the case. Us.”
I swirl what’s left of the wine in my glass, avoiding his gaze for a moment too long.
“You’re intense, you know that?”
“I just know what I want.”
“You make me feel like I’m spinning and falling and anchored all at the same time.”
“Is that a bad thing?”
“Bad? No,” I whisper. “But it’s terrifying.”
He nods. “For me, too.”
I look up at him—my bodyguard, my liar, my maybe-something-more—and for the first time all day, I don’t feel like breaking anything.
Instead, I take another bite of pizza.
“Okay,” I say softly. “One more chance.”
His brow lifts. “Yeah?”
“But,” I add, “if you lie to me again, I will knee you so hard you’ll be tasting your own balls for a month.”
He grins.
And I can’t help it, I grin back.
Because maybe, just maybe, all men are liars.
But not all of them are hopeless.
And some—a precious few—might even be worth forgiving.