Page 33 of The Devils in the Details

Theo’s jaw shifted. Once. Barely perceptible. The kind of movement that happened when a man’s composure developed its first hairline fracture.

“You’re making a mistake,” he said. The warmth was draining now, replaced by something cooler, more measured. “Ari doesn’t see what you are. What you could be. He sees a tool. I see a partner.”

“What I am,” I said, “is employed. What I could be is significantly less interested in this conversation than I already am, which I did not think was mathematically possible, but here we are, pushing the boundaries of human disinterest.”

The fracture widened.

Theo stood, fast, the chair scraped against hardwood, a sound that cut through the quiet of the study like something that didn’t belong there. His hand moved—not toward me, across the desk, fingers closing around my forearm with a grip that was considerably stronger than his manicured hands had any right to be.

His fingers dug in. Hard. The kind of hard that left marks, that registered pain before my brain had fully processed what was happening. His other hand came up, grabbed a fistful of my collar, and the fabric tore at the neck with a sound that was small and specific and entirely unacceptable.

I did not freeze.

This is worth noting because freezing is what most people do. The body locks. The brain short-circuits. The world narrows to the point of contact and everything else goes white.

I Did Not Freeze!

My hand found the Julius Caesar bust on the desk—ornamental, marble, the kind of decorative object that had been sitting there gathering dust since approximately the Renaissance—and I drove it into the side of Theo’s head with both hands and enough force that the sound it made was deeply, profoundly satisfying.

Thunk. Solid. Dense. The acoustic signature of marble meeting skull with the enthusiastic violence of something that had been waiting four hundred years for exactly this moment.

Theo’s grip loosened. His body swayed. His eyes did something complicated—surprise first, sharp and genuine, then something that landed close to disbelief before his brain caught up with what had just happened to it.

I did not wait to assess the damage.

I snatched my laptop bag from the floor and shoved my laptop into it. I was moving before my body had fully committed to the decision, as if my survival instincts had just overridden every other system in the building.

Not toward the exit. Toward Ari’s office.

Every instinct I had was pointing the same direction, like a compass that had found north and was now screaming about it at a volume my nervous system could not ignore. Down the corridor. Boots would have been faster, but boots were upstairs and upstairs was the wrong direction, so bare feet it was, the slap of skin on hardwood loud in the narrow hallway.

I hit Ari’s door at speed. No knock. No courtesy. My shoulder connected with the wood and the door swung open hard enough that it cracked the wall behind it with a sound that announced my arrival with considerably more drama than I had intended.

Ari was behind the desk. Leon was at his shoulder. Both of them looked up with the coordinated attention of men who had been trained to perceive door violations as potential threats and were currently categorizing me accordingly.

I did not slow down.

I rounded the desk without breaking stride. Dropped to my knees. Folded myself into the space underneath it—knees to chin, laptop bag clutched to my chest, the wood above me close enough that I could feel the grain against my hair.

I held one finger to my lips.

Leon stared at me. Ari stared at me. The study was very quiet except for the sound of my heart, which was currently doing something that would have qualified for Olympic consideration if tachycardia were a sport.

From under the desk, I had an excellent view of Ari’s boots. Polished leather. Scuffed at the toes. The kind of boots that had seen more miles than most vehicles and had the stories to prove it.

The boots did not move.

Neither did I.

We stayed like that, the three of us, in a silence that had weight and temperature and the density of a room where something was about to happen, and everyone in it knew exactly what that something was.

The door opened approximately thirty seconds later.

Theo walked in like a man who had not, approximately forty-five seconds ago, had a Roman emperor applied to the side of his head with sufficient force to rearrange his afternoon plans.

His voice came first, easy and warm. “Ari. Perfect timing. I was hoping to catch you.”

From under the desk, my field of vision was limited to boots, lower legs, and the view of a room from knee-height down. Theo’s shoes were pristine Italian leather, the kind that had never met a puddle they couldn’t avoid. Ari’s boots were scuffed at the toes, the leather worn soft in the places where a man’s weight settled when he stood still for too long.