“You’re staring at a shipping manifest like it offended you.” He tilts his head. That slight angle that means he’s reading me. “That’s not like you.”
“Long week.”
“Has it?” He pushes off the frame. Takes three steps into the room. Stops at the distance that’s close enough to be intimate, far enough to retreat.
Nico always knows the geometry of a conversation.
“Because from where I’m standing, it looks like the ground shifted. And you’re handling it about as well as you handle everything emotional.”
My jaw locks. I don’t give him the satisfaction of a flinch.
“Nico.”
“I’m not pushing.” He raises both hands. Surrender that isn’t. “Just observing. You’ve asked six different people about her today. You haven’t gone to see her once.”
I look up at last. Meet his stare. “Don’t.”
Understanding flickers across his face. Or recognition. “When you’re ready to talk about it.” He backs toward the door. “I’m around.”
Then he’s gone.
I stare at the door he closed behind him. My hand grips the pen so hard the plastic creaks.
Six people. He counted.
Fuck.
Midnight.
The compound is quiet. Guards at the perimeter, staff in their quarters, my family scattered to their own corners of this sprawling house.
I’m standing in the doorway of my study with a plate of food in my hands, watching my wife work.
She doesn’t know I’m here.
The lamp pools golden light across the desk, catching the shine of her hair where she’s piled it up with a pencil stabbed through the knot. Reading glasses perched on her nose. Papers spread in organized chaos around her.
Seventeen hours. I’ve been counting those too.
Her pen moves across a notebook in quick, precise strokes. Every few seconds she pauses, frowns, makes a frustrated sound that shouldn’t make my ribs ache.
Distance. That’s what this needs.
The coffee cup beside her is empty. Drained hours ago, judging by the ring it’s left on the paper beneath it. Three pens uncapped, two of them dead. She’s been through them all. Her posture has that deep-set curve of someone who hasn’t stood up in a long time.
I walk in instead.
Her head snaps up. The pen stops. Our stares meet across the room and everything I’ve been telling myself crumbles to ash.
She looks hollowed out. Shadows under her eyes, pallor beneath her olive skin.
I did that to her.
And I can’t stay away.
“Dante.”
My name in her mouth. Careful. Guarded. Like she’s not sure which version of me walked through that door.
