Chapter Eleven #3
“Good.” I ended the call. Set the phone on the desk. The screen dimmed, went dark, and the study settled into the silence that happened when something had been set in motion and the room was waiting for the consequences to arrive.
Two weeks. The window sat in front of me like something physical — fourteen days between now and the conclave, between a family that was still bleeding from Geno’s wounds and a family that might, with the right leverage, walk back into the room where decisions got made.
The conclave was our shot. The only shot.
Attendance-only status ended if I walked in with something the other families needed and walked out with something that put the Romano name back on the map.
A deal. Territory. Access to the shipping lanes that Geno had burned when he decided that bombing a rival family was a smarter move than negotiation.
I could not afford a rebellion at my back while I was doing it.
Alexios knew that. Theodore knew that. Every old-guard loyalist who had watched an illegitimate dock worker take the seat they believed belonged to legitimate blood knew it, and they had been waiting, patient as graves, for the moment when the arithmetic tipped in their favor.
I would not have one. A rebellion required oxygen to burn, and I had spent the last month systematically removing the oxygen from every room Alexios might try to light a match in.
The door opened. Soft. A single sound, hinges well-oiled, and I didn’t need to look to know who it was.
Zephyr stood in the doorway. Laptop under one arm, the strap of the bag cutting across his chest, his free hand holding a caramel he had apparently located in whatever drawer they had been hiding in.
Bare feet on my hardwood floor, turquoise sparkles catching the low light from the desk lamp, and the expression on his face was the blend of watchful and present that meant he had heard enough to form an opinion and was choosing, deliberately, not to share it yet.
He didn’t ask who I called. Didn’t need to. The call had been brief and audible from the corridor, and Zephyr had the insane talent of absorbing information he wasn’t supposed to hear and treating it as something that had been offered rather than something he had taken.
He leaned against the doorframe. Ate the caramel. His eyes moved across my face once.
I glanced at him, once, brief, and Zephyr held it without flinching, without shifting, without doing anything except standing in my doorway with a laptop under his arm and a caramel in his mouth and the absolute certainty of someone who had decided that this was where he lived now and the rest was details.
Nothing was said.
I picked up the phone again. Hit Leon’s number. He answered on the second ring. “Make sure of it,” I said.
Leon’s expression, through the phone, was the configuration of a man who had already intended to.
I could hear it in the silence — the fractional pause, the shift of weight, the unspoken confirmation that the instruction had been redundant because Leon Nikolaidis did not do things halfway and had not started today.
“It’s handled,” he said.
I ended the call and set the phone down.
Zephyr was still in the doorway. The caramel was gone, and his lower lip held the faint shine that happened when sugar met skin and decided to stay, and the look on his face was the blend of sharp and warm that made my chest do something complicated every time I saw it.
I didn’t tell him to leave. I didn’t need to. The doorway was his as much as the library table was his as much as the bed down the hall was his, and the fact that I had stopped pretending otherwise was either the most alarming development of the past month or the only one that made complete sense.
He pushed off the doorframe. Crossed the study. Set his laptop on the desk beside mine, the two screens glowing blue-white against the dark wood.
I looked at him. Really looked. Those blue eyes held mine across the desk, steady, giving nothing away and somehow giving everything at once, and the warmth behind my sternum had nothing to do with the conclave or Alexios or the fourteen days sitting on the desk and everything to do with the fact that Zephyr had run toward me when the world got dangerous and had not, despite several excellent opportunities, run away.
“Two weeks,” I said.
He nodded once. “We’ll handle it.” Not a question. A statement of operational fact, delivered with the quiet certainty of someone who treated impossible timelines the way most people treated breakfast — as something that happened every day and required no commentary.
I believed him. This was worth noting because I did not believe most people.
I reached for the lighter on the desk. Clicked it open. Held the flame, orange against the dim study, and watched it dance for a count of three before snapping it shut.
The sound was final.
Two weeks. Fourteen days. A rebellion at my back and a conclave in front of me and a man eating caramels at my desk who had apparently decided that belonging here was not a question but an answer.
I could work with that.