Chapter 10
SYLVIE
I MEANT TO make a statement with this dress, but walking into Martinis, I’m feeling a little well…understated.
Dammit.
The low gold light, the wall of top-shelf bottles glowing like an altar behind the bar, the booths tucked into velvet shadow, the hush of money that knows how to keep quiet.
It’s like a speakeasy that grew up and got rich.
It’s abuzz with activity, yet wildly private because everyone is so immersed in what they’re doing.
I bet you could kill a man in the corner and no one would find the body until after closing.
I’m in my finest red dress. The one that hugs everything and slits up the thigh, because if I’m walking into a room full of Callen’s people I’m going to walk in like I own it, even if my stomach’s a little queasy.
The nerves are an unpleasant surprise. I’ve hesitated less before slitting a throat, yet here I am, smoothing a dress that doesn’t need smoothing, scanning for a man like a girl at her first dance.
I rub the spot on my hand where the scorpion stung me to check for the bump. It’s gone flat now.
There’s definitely more of a crowd than I expected.
Callen said this was unofficial—small, low-key, a booth reserved, nothing formal.
No need to bring a wedding gift, he’d texted, which landed square in my gut, because I hadn’t even thought about giving a present.
That’s what normal people do when they’re invited to celebrate a friend’s wedding, they bring a token of their gratitude, wrapped, with a card.
The fact that it never once crossed my mind tells me exactly how out of touch I am.
When he sent that message I felt…guilty.
A small twinge of shame highlighting my poor manners.
Callen is already making me feel human, and I’m not sure I like it.
For fuck’s sake: stop, Sylvie. Stop waiting for the metaphorical rug to be pulled from underneath me. It’s already been yanked. I’m flat on my back on the floor, and I did it to myself, because two days ago I went to lunch with this man and I smiled like an idiot when I held his hand in public.
I keep going back to it. The lunch. Over a cobb salad drenched in too much buttermilk ranch, he gave me this whole earnest speech about how he’d lived more life than me, that he’d already buried more of himself than I could even unearth.
Wrong, buddy, so wrong. He even told me how his work was dangerous, and seeing him did come with risks.
Oh Callen, my job would give you nightmares.
He retired the “I’m too old for you” speech which is great, because I’m sick of it.
I waited patiently through his laundry list of reasons we don’t make sense, and I told him, quite earnestly actually, that I was way too curious to walk away now.
Callen’s smart. He knows a lost cause. He’d have an easier time solving a thirty-year-old cold case with zero evidence than convincing me to stay away at this point.
And once we accepted that, we finished lunch then walked downtown D.C.
toward who-knows-what. I didn’t ask questions, I was simply enjoying the sunshine when he just…
took my hand. He laced his fingers through mine and walked me through foot traffic like it wasn’t the most special thing I’ve ever been part of.
Over and over this man offers me a mountain of intimacy as if it’s a pebble.
He’ll apparently never stop impressing me with normalcy.
I have never tasted normal before. Turns out it’s delicious. Turns out I’m starving for it.
Right when my heart couldn’t take one more kind thing, he paused in front of the Granier Hotel and pecked my cheek.
Pecked it. I covered my cheek like I could keep the kiss in place as long as I had my hand cupped over the sacred little gesture.
It was so shocking, I forgot I wasn’t staying at the Granier anymore.
As soon as Callen saw my hotel room, I had to move across town for cover.
I had to stand in that lobby a full ten minutes after he left, pretending to check my phone, waiting for the coast to clear before I bolted to the other side of the city like the liar I am.
My lies are getting logistically inconvenient now, which is how you know there are too many of them.
A clean life has one story. I’ve got about nine of them.
Focus. Find Callen. Be a person for three hours. Don’t kill anyone. Try to be likable, which is admittedly not my strong suit. Okay, fine…try to be tolerable.
I move deeper into the room.
Trailing the length of the bar, scanning the booths, I still don’t see him.
No Callen, no reserved table that reads “wedding party,” no cluster of people who look like a friend-family celebration.
Maybe I beat him here? Maybe I’ll get a minute to find my footing before I have to perform as whatever I’m supposed to be tonight.
Callen and I are currently somewhere between what we are—predator and prey—and what I think I want to be now…
a normal girl who gets invited to a wedding reception and remembers to bring a gift.
I’m halfway down the bar when I see a face that stops me cold.
Shut. The fuck. Up.
I’d know that jaw anywhere. Tall, built, stupidly handsome in the way that gets men underestimated, leaning on the bar trying to flag a bartender with the easy entitlement of a guy who’s never once been ignored in his life.
I met him a while back—New York City, when I was chasing a whisper that the Accardi, the lethal Italian mafia responsible for my family’s death, were surfacing again, following a lead that went nowhere the way they all do.
He was working too, though we never really said the words out loud—you can smell your own kind.
I made him a drink. I nicknamed him because his face was too pretty for the work.
Babyface? I ask in my head.
He’d have been a fun one-night stand, back then, but he was hung up on some girl. Wore it all over him. I remember thinking whoever she was, she had a man wrapped around her finger the way a python wraps around a rabbit and never lets go.
I do another fast sweep for Callen. I do not want him walking in on me chatting up another man at the bar and how I know this guy is an explanation I don’t feel like giving.
But as soon as I deem the coast clear, I slide up next to Babyface, close, easy, and catch the bartender’s eye as she comes down the rail.
“How about two Love Spells?” I ask.
His head turns, and I watch him clock what I just did thirty seconds ago.
It lands—the recognition, the oh hell flicker, the fast recalibration of confusion to a wide-ass smile.
The Love Spell drink is mine—my recipe, purple and sweet and quietly loaded, a little Romani chemistry stirred into something that goes down like candy.
My signature drink if you will. I made him one in New York when we were being ignored at the bar, both trying to drink away our anxiety of our present missions.
“Sylvie.” He’s found his footing, and there’s an edge of genuine question under the charm. “What the hell are you doing in D.C.? How’d you find me?”
“Don’t flatter yourself, Babyface.” I lean an elbow on the bar. “I’m not stalking you. This is pure coincidence. I’m in town for work.” I give him a wink, the kind that says don’t worry, I know how to keep a secret, yours and mine both. “But relax. Not tonight. Tonight, I’m just here to drink.”
The bartender’s still standing there. Platinum blonde, dark brows, a long ponytail and a wary set to her mouth. She’s looking at Babyface like she’s on his side, and when she speaks it’s to warn me off. Is this the girl he’s head over heels for?
“You’re barking up the wrong tree,” she says to me. Bold. I like her already. “Lance here just got married today.”
Lance? Oh, that’s right. His other name.
My eyes drop to his left hand, and there lies a thick platinum band, shiny brand new, catching the gold light.
“You’re kidding.” And for one clean second it’s just delight, genuine, because whatever else he is, he’s one of the few people alive who’s ever seen what I am and shrugged. I smack him on the back. “Look at you. You got your girl.”
“Sure did,” he says, and the way he says it, the pride packed under it, I’m genuinely happy for him. Good for him. Good for her. Good for happily-ever-afters.
“Well, then.” I turn back to the bartender. “Two Love Spells—but for Lance here and his new bride.”
She holds up both hands. “Okay, you’re going to have to tell me what the hell a ‘Love Spell’ even is. I’ve never heard of it.”
I laugh. “Fine. Two of whatever Lance’s wife likes.”
The bartender lets out a long-suffering breath. “That’d be a filthy martini. About ten extra olives.”
“Make it three, then.” Lance nudges my shoulder with his. “And take your time, Ollie.”
Ollie, apparently, shuffles off, and Lance leans in, dropping his voice under the noise of the room.
“Weird coincidence,” he murmurs. There’s a professional’s caution threaded through the warmth now. “You here for good, or evil?”
Why the hell is he looking nervous… Oh fuck.
Ollie’s words circle back around and land with new reverence.
The hot panic begins to rise beneath my skin causing an emotional swelter, like Texas heat trapped in a sealed car, because Lance just got married, and Lance knows exactly what I am, knows my trade, could unravel my whole clean-stranger cover with one careless sentence in front of the wrong person.
And there’s not a chance in hell that there are two wedding receptions today at this very bar, at the very time Callen said I should meet them.
I’m made.
“After a while of what we do, isn’t it all the same?” I try to banter as my mind races for the lie that’s going to get me out of this. Lance knows. He knows I’m a killer. He knows I’m not some girl Callen found in a bar. Every fragile thing I’ve carefully concocted is about to come down.