Chapter 26
Quentin
"I'm sorry, Quentin." Stone looked at me with that particular expression—part concern, part frustration—like a parent catching their kid making the same stupid mistake twice. "I don't want to say I told you so."
I’d called him right after I discovered that Julia had left the restaurant. We’d agreed to meet at my office.
"But you're going to anyway." My voice came out flat. Hollow. I couldn't muster the energy to argue. Because he had told me. And I hadn't listened. "We don't know anything for sure yet," I added, though even I could hear how weak it sounded.
Serenity placed an evidence bag on my desk. A damaged slug sat inside, misshapen from impact. “We got this earlier.”
I stared at it, that small piece of metal that had nearly ended Julia's life. Nearly ended mine. "The bullet? Anything useful?"
"Yes." But Serenity's expression killed any hope before she could continue.
"But?"
"My vision showed a dark-haired man, maybe thirty to thirty-five. Fit. Determined." She closed her eyes, clearly trying to pull more details from the memory. "I saw him loading a magazine. Then he answered his phone—a woman's voice told him to kill them both."
My chest tightened. Kill them both. Julia and me.
"Could you identify him? The woman?"
"No." Frustration leaked into her voice. "The vision was hazy, dark—like watching through smoke. Dark eyes, olive skin, but nothing distinctive. And the woman's voice..." She shook her head. "I didn't recognize it."
"But it wasn't Julia." I needed to hear it confirmed.
"No. Definitely not Julia."
Some of the tension in my shoulders eased. She hadn't been the one giving the kill order. That had to mean something.
Stone picked up the evidence bag, turning it in the light. "It's a nine-millimeter. Professional work, based on Serenity's vision. This is our guy—has to be. The killer from New York."
"Silvio." The name tasted bitter on my tongue. I looked at Stone. "We have his photo—"
"Already showed her." Stone gestured to Serenity. "First thing I did."
Of course he had. Stone was nothing if not thorough.
I met Serenity's gaze, searching for certainty. "Could it be him?"
"Maybe." She spread her hands helplessly. "But I can't say for sure, and I won't accuse someone without being certain. If I tell you it's him and you let your guard down around someone else..."
"I understand." I did. But damn, I needed something definitive. Some clarity in this mess.
"So, if it was Silvio..." I forced myself to think through the logic, even though every instinct in me rebelled against it. "He's Julia's cousin. Why would he try to kill her?"
"Maybe it was theater," Stone suggested. "Make it look good so you'd trust her."
"No." The word came out harder than I intended. "We've been over this. Nobody takes that shot—that close, that precise—as part of some elaborate con. He was trying to kill her. I'm sure of it."
I had to be sure of it. Because if I was wrong...
Stone grunted his displeasure. "I don't like any of this. Unknown assassin, rival family, something we're not seeing—we're vulnerable here."
"You think I don't know that?" Frustration bled into my voice. I'd been playing this game my whole adult life. Rivals. Enemies. People wanting to take what was mine, to eliminate the competition. "It's not exactly news, Stone."
"Let's talk about Julia." Serenity's voice cut through the tension.
She held up one finger, then another, ticking off points.
"One: She's a target too, specifically because she's fallen for you.
Two: She's still technically an enemy, and why she confessed instead of just killing you is a mystery.
And three: We're missing something. There's a bigger picture we're not seeing. "
My jaw clenched so hard it ached.
Why she didn't just kill you?
That question had been eating at me since she'd disappeared from that restaurant. She'd had opportunities. Hell, she'd had plenty of chances to put a bullet in me. In my office. At her apartment. In her bed, of all places, when I was at my most vulnerable.
But she hadn't.
She'd confessed instead. Looked at me with tears in her eyes and told me the truth.
And then she'd vanished.
"I don't like where your head's at right now." Stone's voice pulled me back. "I can see it on your face—you're already making excuses for her. Convincing yourself she's not a threat because she's got you twisted up inside."
"I don't think she's a threat." The words came out before I could stop them.
Stone's expression darkened. "Boss—"
"I know what you're going to say." I held up a hand. "I know it's your job to protect me from threats. Even threats that come from my own bad judgment."
Her words kept replaying in my mind, a loop I couldn't escape.
I'm so sorry, Quentin. You have to believe me. When we’re together, it's real. I'm not playing you. I couldn't do it. I'm not a person who would sleep with someone as an undercover role. Never. I only have sex in caring relationships formed around love and respect.
I believed her.
God help me, I believed every word.
And that terrified me more than any assassin's bullet ever could. Because believing her meant I'd already lost the ability to think clearly about this. Meant I'd let my feelings cloud my judgment in ways that could get me—get all of us—killed.
But I couldn't shake the image of her face when she'd told me. The genuine anguish. The fear. The desperate hope that I'd understand.
She'd been as trapped as I was. Maybe more so.
"Serenity." I stood abruptly, needing to move, to do something. "Her desk. There has to be something personal there. If you can touch it, get a vision—see her future, what she's planning—"
Understanding lit Serenity's face. "Yes. Good idea." She stood, clapping her hands together. "Let's see what I can find."
As she headed for the door, Stone caught my arm. His voice dropped low.
"Boss. Be careful here. I've seen men lose everything because they couldn't see past a pretty face and a sad story." His grip tightened. "Don't let her be the thing that gets you killed."
I met his eyes and saw genuine concern there. Fear for me.
"I won't," I said.
But even as the words left my mouth, I knew the truth.
It might already be too late.
Because somewhere between hiring Julia Russell and discovering she was Julia Russo, I'd done the one thing I'd sworn I'd never do.
I'd fallen in love with someone I couldn't trust.
And now she was gone. Had she been pulled back to New York by her family, facing God knows what consequences for failing to kill me?
For choosing me over them?
The thought made my blood run cold.
Where are you, Julia? Are you safe? Did I just lose you before I ever really had you?
"Let's go," I said to Stone, following Serenity toward Julia's desk.
But my mind was three thousand miles away, with a woman who'd lied to me about everything. Except, I was beginning to suspect, the one thing that mattered most.
I stood near Julia's desk, arms crossed, watching Stone methodically search through her things. Each opened drawer felt like a violation. An invasion of the privacy she'd trusted me with.
Trusted. The word twisted like a knife.
Had she ever really trusted me? Or had every moment between us been calculated, rehearsed, part of some elaborate con?
Stone rifled through papers while Serenity waited patiently, her bare hand ready to touch whatever he found.
My mind kept circling back to our dinner. Returning to that table and finding her simply gone. No note. No message with the staff. Just an empty chair and my phone buzzing with her desperate calls and texts.
Calls I'd ignored on Stone's orders.
That had nearly killed me. Watching her name light up my screen again and again, knowing she was trying to reach me, to explain—and forcing myself not to answer. Eventually, the calls had stopped.
The silence after that had been worse than the ringing.
"If she'd planned to kill me," I said, breaking the quiet, "she had plenty of opportunities. Why confess? Why tell me the truth if she was just going to disappear anyway?"
Stone didn't look up from the drawer he was searching. "To throw you off. Make you sympathetic. Buy herself time."
"Or maybe—" I swallowed hard. "Maybe she had no choice but to leave. Maybe it wasn't her decision."
Stone straightened, meeting my eyes. "I know what you want to believe—"
"I'm trying to think logically here." But even as I said it, I knew it was a lie. There was nothing logical about what I felt. "The relationship we were building... it felt real, Stone. Genuine. Could I really have been that blind?"
"People have been fooled by less," Stone said quietly. Not unkindly, but without sugar-coating it either.
The ache in my chest intensified. Had her affections been an act all along?
I looked at Serenity, desperate for reassurance. "If she was faking it, she deserves an Oscar. Because I can't believe it was all a performance."
Sympathy softened Serenity's features. "I don't think it was. But—" she glanced at Stone, then back to me. "This situation is complicated. And you know Stone's a cynic when it comes to security. His only job is keeping you alive."
"I know." The words came out rougher than intended.
And I did know. Stone wasn't being cruel—he was being smart. Professional. Doing exactly what I paid him to do.
But knowing that didn't make it hurt less.
This was like playing poker with my life as the ante. I was holding cards I couldn't read, making bets I couldn't afford to lose. And the only way to know if Julia was my salvation or my destruction was to keep playing the hand until it was over.
Win or lose.
Live or die.
"I think I found something." Stone held up a delicate lipstick case—vintage, ornate, the kind you'd see in an antique store.
My pulse quickened. Please. Let it tell us something. Anything.