I close my eyes for half a second because there are very few people whose calls come through that number, and fewer still whose timing can make irritation and something warmer move through me at the same time.
Kai glances down at the screen on the table beside my coat. His brows lift a fraction before he looks at me. “Vieri,” Kai says.
The room changes—not visibly for anyone else, maybe. But I feel it. Tatiana’s posture shifts with interest. Maksim’s gaze sharpens despite his boredom. Piotr is too scared to grasp the significance, which is the only reason he continues to breathe without irritating me further.
I stand and take the phone from Kai’s hand. Vincenzo’s name glows across the screen.
My body responds before my pride can call it pathetic. It has been six days since Isle Lucia. Six days since the villa. Six days since I put him on a plane and watched him leave with the kind of calm expression that fooled everyone except me.
Six days is not long enough to miss someone this much. Apparently, my heart disagrees.
I answer the call and turn slightly away from the man in the chair, though I do not leave the room.
“You have terrible timing,” I say in Italian, because hearing his language in my mouth still does stupid things to him, and I like annoying him with it.
There is no greeting from Vincenzo. No warmth. No soft thread of amusement.
“Tell me you are not in public,” Vincenzo says.
I glance around the cellar, at the bleeding man in the chair, my pouting assassin sister, my right hands, and the drain in the floor. “Define public.”
Vincenzo exhales hard on the other end. “Nikolaj.”
The way he says my name makes every other sound in the room dim for half a second. Even pissed off, especially pissed off, he still has that effect. I lean my hip against the edge of the table and watch Piotr try not to bleed on himself too loudly.
“I’m not in public,” I say. “What’s wrong?”
Vincenzo pauses for one beat, and in that beat, I hear enough to know he is not calling for pleasure, not calling because he misses me. This is business.
“There’s a bounty on your head,” Vincenzo says.
I go still—not because of the news, but his voice. He has wrapped it in ice, but the fear is there beneath, quiet and carefully leashed. It reaches through the phone and settles somewhere under my sternum before I can defend against it.
Across the room, Tatiana catches the shift in me immediately and stops pouting.
I say nothing fast enough. Vincenzo hears that too.
“Nikolaj,” he says slowly. “Why do you not sound surprised?”
Fuck.
I drag my tongue over my teeth and look toward the ceiling for half a second. This is exactly the sort of conversation that should happen somewhere quiet, preferably not in front of a bloodied informant, my sister, and two men who already know too much about the shape of my personal disasters.
But life has never been considerate, and Vincenzo has never cared much for timing once he has decided something needs to be said.
“Because I’ve heard whispers,” I say.
“Whispers,” Vincenzo repeats, voice going colder.
I can practically see him standing straighter on the other end, that elegant fury pulling him tight. It makes me want to kiss him, shake him, and tell him to stop caring so loudly that other people might hear it.
“Yes,” I say. “Whispers.”
“How long have you known?” Vincenzo asks.
I do not answer immediately.
Tatiana’s eyes widen in the corner with the unholy delight of a woman realizing she is about to witness domestic violence by cellphone.
