Page 37 of The Devils in the Details

He did not move my hand.

His voice came low. Not the tone he used for rooms. Not the tone he used for Leon. Something lower, rougher. “I tried to stay away.” The words landed against the top of my head, his breath warm through my hair. “Seven days. I tried to keep my distance. To let you work. To let the family stand on its own.”

His hand moved on my back. Slow circles between my shoulder blades, the pressure of fingers working through fabric, through blanket, through the layers between his palm and my skin.

“It is no longer possible.”

Five words. Quiet. Complete. The kind of statement that did not require elaboration because the elaboration lived in the arm around my waist and the hand on my back and the steady heartbeat under my cheek that had not changed its tempo despite whatever was happening behind those five words.

I did not respond.

I could have. I had words. I had several thousand words, arranged in various configurations, some of them professional, some of them considerably less so, and all of them currently residing in a part of my brain that had been temporarily decommissioned by the combined effects of adrenaline crash, a thermal blanket, and the warmth of Ari’s neck against my forehead.

So I said nothing. My hand kept its grip on his shirt. My breathing slowed to something that approximated sleep.

The lighter clicked. Once. Open, held, the small orange flame dancing against the darkness behind my eyelids, and then it snapped shut and the sound was final, like a period at the end of a sentence that had been building for longer than either of us was willing to admit.

I fell asleep like that. His lap warm under mine. The blanket heavy around my shoulders. My face in the curve of his neck and his hand making slow circles on my back and my fingers twisted in the hem of his shirt with a grip that did not loosen.

Not when my breathing evened out, not when the world went soft at the edges. Not when the last thing I registered was the cedar-and-coffee scent of him and the five words he had said into my hair that I would examine tomorrow, with coffee, when my brain was working again and the bruises had stopped throbbing and the steadiness of his lap made something other than perfect, catastrophic sense.

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.