Chapter Nine
~ Aristoteles ~
Zephyr’s weight was warm against my chest, his breathing even and deep, the kind of deep that came from genuine sleep rather than pretending to be asleep.
The blanket Leon had delivered was heavy wool, military-grade and I wrapped it around Zephyr carefully.
Leon paused at the threshold. I could feel it—the extended beat of a question he hadn’t asked and wasn’t going to.
“No,” I said to the empty air above the closed door. My voice came out flat, the tone I reserved for statements that were not up for discussion. “It’s not a good idea.”
The hallway went quiet as Leon left. Boots on hardwood, fading, and then the sound was gone and it was just me and Zephyr in the study with the amber lamp and the papers scattered across the desk and the quiet hum of the palazzo settling into night.
Zephyr didn’t stir. His face was turned into the curve of my neck, one hand curled under his own chin, fingers loose in a way that only happened when the body had surrendered completely.
The turquoise sparkles on his toes caught the low light, small defiant points of color against the dark wood of my chair.
I reached for the phone with my free hand. My arm was already asleep where Zephyr’s weight had cut off circulation, but that was a problem for later, and later had a long queue of problems that started with Theo Romano still breathing and worked its way down from there.
The family lawyer picked up on the second ring. Always the second ring. The man had built his career on availability and the specific terror of what happened when Aristoteles Romano’s calls went to voicemail.
“Security paperwork,” I said. No greeting.
Greetings were for people with time, and I was currently holding one hundred and fifteen pounds of sleeping blond and had approximately six weeks before the conclave became a problem I couldn’t solve with phone calls.
“It moves faster, or I move the firm. Your choice.”
A pause. The kind of pause lawyers used to make you think they were considering options when they were actually calculating billable hours.
“I understand the timeline concerns,” the lawyer said. His voice had the polished smoothness of someone who charged by the syllable. “However, the regulatory review for firearms licensing in the context of the—”
“Six weeks.” I cut him off. The lighter clicked open in my left hand, held steady, the small orange flame dancing against the dim study. “Full credentials. Every name on my list walks through that door with a badge or the guest list burns. I don’t care how many signatures it takes.”
Another pause. Longer this time, weighted with the gravity of a man who understood exactly what “the guest list burns” meant when it came from my mouth.
“It will be done.”
“Good.”
I ended the call and set the phone on the desk.
The lighter snapped shut.
Zephyr hadn’t moved. His breath was warm against my collarbone, steady. His eyelashes cast faint shadows on his cheeks, dark against skin that had gone pale with the aftermath of adrenaline.
The torn collar of his shirt hung open, exposing the sharp line of his collarbone and a strip of skin that my eyes found and my brain registered and filed under “later, examine thoroughly, possibly with both hands.”
The bruises on his arms were darkening. Theo’s fingerprints, five points each, already purple at the edges. I catalogued them with the cold precision of a man who kept ledgers, who remembered every mark, who understood that certain debts accrued interest faster than others.
My phone lit up. The second call. A contact in Rome, a name that didn’t appear in any Romano file because the man had been useful precisely once, four years ago, and useful men who stayed useful did so by keeping their names out of files.
I answered. Held the phone close, voice low, the tone I used when the person on my lap was asleep and the person on the line needed to understand that volume was a courtesy I was currently extending.
“Conclave security,” I said. “I want eyes on it two weeks out, not one. Your people, not mine. I’ll cover the difference.”
A pause. The sound of keys clicking, the rhythm of someone taking notes while pretending they weren’t.
“That’s a significant departure from standard protocol,” the contact said. His voice was gravel and cigarettes, the voice of a man who had been doing this long enough to know when a request was unusual and smart enough not to ask why.
“Standard protocol got five people killed at the Naples summit. I’m not interested in repeating history.”
The lighter clicked open. The flame danced orange against the dark study, throwing long shadows across the desk where Zephyr’s laptop bag sat open, papers spilling out, the chaos of a mind that moved too fast to bother with organization.
“Consider it handled,” the contact said.
“Good.”
I ended the call and set the phone down again.
The lighter snapped shut.
Zephyr shifted once, small, his body adjusting against mine. His hand tightened on the fabric of my shirt, fingers curling into the denim vest, and then relaxed again, sinking back into the deep rhythm of sleep.
I watched his face. The unguarded stillness of it was something I hadn’t seen before. Awake, Zephyr was all motion—hands, words, the rapid percussion of a brain that processed information faster than most people could speak it.
Asleep, he was something else entirely. Quiet. Still. The peace of a body that had been running on borrowed energy for longer than it was designed to and had finally, mercifully, found a place to stop.
His lower lip was slightly parted. The caramel shine was gone, replaced by the soft dryness of sleep, and something warm moved behind my sternum that had nothing to do with the weight on my lap and everything to do with the fact that this man had run toward me when Theo had put hands on him.
He had folded himself under my desk like it was the most logical shelter in the world, and he was now sleeping against my chest with the absolute trust of someone who had not stopped to question whether that trust was warranted or not.
It wasn’t. That was the problem. Trust was a currency I had never earned and had no business spending, and yet here it was, warm against my collarbone, breathing slow and even, its turquoise-sparkled toes dangling over the edge of my thigh.
My phone lit up a third time. The Genoa contact. A man whose name I would never say out loud in a room with witnesses because the favor he owed me was the kind that got people killed if the wrong ears heard about it.
I answered, my voice lower now. “Talk.”
“The perimeter you asked about.” The man’s voice was quiet, measured, the voice of someone who understood that phones were not private and certain words carried more risk than others.
“It’s clean. No movement. No visitors. The subject has been home for three days straight, which is unusual, but the pattern is consistent.
Whatever he’s planning, he’s planning it from inside. ”
I absorbed this. The lighter clicked open, held, the flame steady in the still air of the study.
“Keep watching,” I said. “Daily reports. Anything changes, I hear about it before the change finishes happening.”
“Understood.”
The call ended.
Three calls, forty minutes. It wasn’t lost on me that I was a man running a crime family from a chair with a sleeping civilian in his lap and my list of problems was growing longer by the hour.
The conclave was six weeks out. The security paperwork needed to move.
Theo was still walking around with his skull intact, which was a generosity already under review, and somewhere in the dark corners of Florence, the old guard was watching, waiting, calculating whether the illegitimate dock worker with the blond on his lap was something they could outlast or something they needed to remove.
Zephyr’s weight had settled against my chest—his right shoulder tucked under my arm, his left hand curled against his own collarbone, his face turned so that his forehead rested against the side of my neck.
The blanket Leon had brought covered him from shoulders to ankles, wool heavy and warm, and the only parts of him visible were the top of his head, one hand, and the turquoise sparkles on his toes.
I shifted. My arm was fully asleep now, pins and needles radiating from shoulder to fingertips, but the discomfort was academic compared to the more pressing question of how to move a sleeping man without waking him.
The answer, as it turned out, was carefully.
I stood. One motion, controlled, the kind of controlled that came from years of moving heavy objects in the dark without making noise. Zephyr’s weight transferred from my lap to my arms without disruption, his body adjusting with the boneless compliance of deep sleep.
He made a sound. Not a word. A murmur, low and fuzzy, the noise of a brain registering movement without fully waking up.
His hand found my shoulder, fingers curling into the fabric of my vest, and then he settled against my chest with the absolute trust of something that had decided the destination was irrelevant as long as the vehicle was me.
He weighed nothing. One hundred and fifteen pounds, most of it bone and attitude, and the lightness of him registered somewhere below my sternum with the uncomfortable precision of a fact I had been avoiding for seven days.
The hallway was dark. The palazzo hummed around us—old pipes settling, the distant click of a thermostat adjusting, the particular soundtrack of a building that had been standing for four centuries and had developed opinions about nighttime.
My boots were soft on the hardwood, each step measured, like the tempo of a man carrying something fragile through a dark house.
I did not consider the study with its built-in window seat where Zephyr had taken naps for the past week. The option presented itself—down the hall, third door, the room with the good light and the questionable wifi.
I considered it for approximately one second.