She comes in twenty minutes later.
Clemente calls for her, a single word, her name, the ease of a man who summons people and expects them to come. Riley appears in the doorway in a dress chosen by someone who understands exactly what it is for.
Ava.
Completely, entirely, seamlessly, Ava.
She crosses to Clemente without looking at anyone else in the room, not at Diego, not at me, just at him, the focused warmth of a woman whose whole world is the man she is walking toward, and Clemente places her in his lap with the ease of a man who has done it a thousand times.
His hand moves to her waist.
Then higher.
His fingers trace the neckline of her dress with the casual proprietary certainty of a man who touches what is his because he can. Slowly, his thumb circling.
“The best woman I’ve ever had.” To the room. To no one. To everyone. The satisfied announcement of a man displaying something he is proud of. “In every way.”
I look at the window.
At the ocean beyond it.
At anything that isn’t Clemente’s hand on Riley.
She is Ava.Completely. Not a flicker of anything, just that composed ease she’d built over months, his hand on her, and her face warm, present, and entirely performing.
Every part of me wants to put my fist through his face.
Not jealousy or not only that. It’s something deeper, more complicated, and furious. It’s the rage of a man watching someone he cared about be reduced to a display piece by the most dangerous man in the room, and having no recourse, response, or option except to sit in his chair, be Marco Reyes, and look at the ocean and breathe.
She had told me herself.
I do what I need to do, Ryan.
Understanding it then had been one thing.
Watching it now is completely another.
Marco Reyes—mildly appreciative, appropriate, professional.
Ryan—every muscle in his body held perfectly still by sheer force of will.
And then Riley’s eyes find mine.
Just for a fraction of a second.
A look so brief that anyone watching would have seen nothing, two people in the same room glancing in the same direction, nothing more.
But in that fraction, it was everything.
I’m okay.
Stay in the chair.
Don’t.
I hold her gaze for exactly as long as is safe, then I look back at the ocean and stay in the chair.
The meeting wraps up an hour later.
