Page 40 of The Devils in the Details

His shoulder pressed against my ribs, his hand found the edge of the silk pants and curled around the fabric with the unconscious certainty of something that had decided where it belonged and was now implementing that decision.

I pulled him in. One arm around his shoulders, my hand finding the back of his head, fingers threading through blond hair that was still damp at the temples from whatever residual adrenaline had been working its way out of his system.

My other hand lay flat on the mattress, palm down, my silver ring catching what little light made it through the curtains.

He settled against my chest. His weight was warm, and the sound of his breathing was steady against my sternum, slow and even.

I stared at the ceiling. As the dark pressed down, familiar and patient, I ran the ledger in my head.

Theo. Still walking. Still breathing. Still wearing expensive shoes and carrying the entitlement of a man who had never been told no and was now discovering that the word existed.

That generosity was under review. Thorough review. The kind of review that involved knives and a notable absence of witnesses.

The conclave. Six weeks. The security paperwork, the guest list, the arithmetic of a family that had fallen and was now walking back into a room full of people who had watched it happen and were waiting to see if I’d fall too.

Full credentials or burn the list. I meant it. They would learn that I meant things, or they would learn what happened when I didn’t.

The five hundred million. Sitting in accounts that had been empty seven days ago, returned by a man who had found it in the dark and handed it back like it was nothing, like the genius required to track stolen money across international borders was a party trick rather than the thing that had just saved the Romano family from extinction.

And the fact that mattered, the fact that lived somewhere below my sternum and refused to be categorized: when Theo put hands on him, Zephyr’s first instinct had been to run. Toward me. Not away. Toward.

He had rounded my desk and folded himself underneath it like it was the most logical shelter in the world, and the trust embedded in that gesture was something I had no framework for, no vocabulary, no precedent in thirty-two years of a life that had taught me, repeatedly and with emphasis, that trust was a weapon other people used and I did not extend.

Yet here he was. Warm against my chest. Breathing slow. Trusting me with the absoluteness of someone who had not stopped to calculate the risk, and the fact that he hadn’t calculated it was, objectively, the most alarming thing about him.

I needed to convince him this was where he belonged. The conclusion arrived cold and certain, the way all my conclusions arrived—not as questions, but as statements.

Zephyr would argue. Of course he would argue. Zephyr argued with doorframes and gelato vendors and the concept of reasonable footwear, and the idea that he would simply nod and accept that he belonged in my bed in my house with my family’s future balanced on the architecture of his brain was laughable in its optimism.

Good.

I had never wanted anything that came easily. Easy things were forgettable. The things that stayed, the things that mattered, were the ones that cost you something, that made you work for every inch, that forced you to become someone capable of holding them.

Zephyr shifted against my chest. His hand tightened on the silk of my pants, fingers curling into the fabric with the unconscious certainty of someone who was now securing his position, and the warmth of him pressed against my ribs with the solidity of a fact I could no longer pretend was theoretical.

I closed my eyes. The dark settled around us, warm and patient, and the ledger ran itself in the background—Theo, the conclave, the five hundred million, the trust pressed against my sternum—and beneath it all, quieter, the single certainty that had been building since approximately the moment a five-foot-five blond had slid a pre-signed NDA across a desk and looked at me like I was the most interesting problem he’d encountered all week.

Zephyr didn’t know yet, but he wasn’t going home.

He was already there.

Chapter Ten

~ Zephyr ~

I woke up to weight and warmth and the distinct, catastrophic realization that I was still at Ari’s mansion. And Ai’s arms locked around me like he was worried I might try to levitate.

I lay still. Cataloguing. The way his forearm crossed my ribs, heavy and warm and completely immovable. The heat of his chest against my back. His breathing slow and deep, the kind that came from genuine sleep, the kind that made his ribcage expand against my spine with the steady rhythm.

I shifted. Not much. Just a fractional adjustment, testing the boundaries of what my body was allowed to do within the jurisdiction of Ari’s arms.

They tightened. Instantly. No hesitation, no waking—just the automatic, unconscious pressure of a man whose body had apparently made a series of decisions that his conscious mind had not yet been briefed on.

I stared at the stripes of light on the wall. Pale gold pressing through the wooden shutters in thin bars, striping the bed, catching the silver herringbone chain on the nightstand.

Beside it: my switchblade. One wrapped caramel, gold foil gleaming like it had been placed there by someone who understood the assignment.

“This is a terrible idea,” I informed the ceiling, quietly, because my internal monologue had opinions and those opinions required expression, regardless of whether anyone was listening.