Not a command.
A plea dressed up as one.
What moves through me has no safe name.
I give it to him anyway.
"Working on it."
His hand drops.
He steps back.
The wall goes up — smooth, practiced, and now completely unconvincing, now that I know what lives behind it.
"Niko." He doesn't look away from me.
Niko materializes in the doorway like he's been waiting for his cue — which he absolutely has, the little eavesdropping genius — and after one look at the two of us, becomes very interested in his laptop.
"Wire," Luca says. "Best one we have."
"Already pulled it."
Two hours later,I'm memorizing exit routes when Luca appears at the kitchen counter beside me.
He doesn't say anything for a long moment. He just stands there, close enough that I can feel his heat, staring at the map like it's offended him personally.
"If this goes wrong." His voice is very quiet. Absolute. The voice he uses when he means it down to the bone. "I'll start a war you can't imagine."
I look at him.
At the hard jaw, the ruthless mouth, the eyes that have been tracking my every move all morning like I'm the only thing in the room worth watching.
"Then let's make sure it doesn't."
He holds my gaze for one long moment.
Nods once.
Goes back to his coffee.
But his shoulder stays pressed against mine for the rest of the morning, and neither of us moves away.
18
LUCA
The wire is taped to her ribs, just below her left breast.
I know this because I put it there myself. Forty minutes ago, in the brownstone study. Serafina in a silk robe, arms raised, her eyes fixed somewhere over my shoulder. I pressed the adhesive flat against her skin. Kept my hands professional through sheer, sustained act of will.
She didn't speak.
Neither did I.
I was too busy not noticing her breathing had gone shallow the way it does when she's affected and refusing to show it. That the room smelled like her — warm skin and clean soap — with my own sheets underneath, which is a problem I stopped pretending I wasn't aware of approximately three days ago.
I stepped back.
