She said it plainly, without armor, like it was simple. Like it wasn't the most catastrophic thing anyone has ever handed me. I think about it the way you think about a live grenade—too much and you’re dead, ignore it and you’re dead, but for half a heartbeat it holds the promise of everything.
I take a long pull of the beer. Stop thinking about it.
Start again immediately.
I'm so deep inside my own head that I don't register the footsteps. Don't register anything until he's already crossing the room—jacket collar up, shaking water from his hair, laughing at something on his phone—the private laugh, unperformed, the kind you only do when you think you're alone.
I know that laugh. I know that voice. And I know that jaw because it looks just like his mother’s.
Samuel Capello.
He scans the bar for a seat. Finds me instead.
We look at each other, and the air changes the way it does between two people who grew up in the same house and understood from early on that the house was wrong and never talked about it. Not once. Not in thirteen years.
I run the math in under three seconds.
Rowan's hotel. Rowan's two days. Rowan's shipping company that Samuel runs the legitimate face of. This is no coincidence. Rowan put us both here, like chess pieces. Now I just have to figure out why.
Samuel reluctantly walks up to the bar, slides into the seat next to me. “Reth.”
“Samuel.”
The bartender comes. Samuel orders in French—easy, practiced, the French of a man who travels for work and has been doing it long enough that it stopped being impressive. He wraps both hands around the glass when it arrives and stares at it for a moment.
“It’s not every day you’re seen out in the world without your buff.”
I shrug. “Guess I’m out of fucks to give.”
“Business?” he asks.
“Finished.”
“Mine too.” He drinks. “Well, almost.”
“How’s my sister, Samuel?”
“She’s good. Misses you.” Takes a sip of his drink. “She and Lucas went to join my parents on the island while I’m here.”
Wildfire erupts in my marrow.
“They’re with your parents?”
“Yeah.” He leans back. “Mary hates when I travel. Valeria invited her as soon as my dad told her about their two-week getaway.”
Calculations start doing themselves in my head. Mary and Lucas are on the Capello island with Rowan and Valeria. The geometry of it assembles itself in under two seconds. Mary removed from the equation, placed somewhere controlled, somewhere Valeria can reach her without effort. Keeping her leash close while Rowan has her cut off from the world.
It tells me two things simultaneously—Valeria has no idea I’m in Brussels. There’s no way she would run the risk of me running into Samuel, not right now. Which means she’s not having me tagged or followed—or rather, unable to. Rowan really doesn’t want her to know I’m here. Which means Rowan has something to gain from this conversation that Valeria would shut down if she knew about it.
The question is what.
“When’s the last time you spoke to your dad?”
Samuel wraps both hands around his glass and stares at it. “Weeks. I dunno. I don’t keep track.”
“He’s your dad, you work for him, and it’s been weeks?”
“I run the shipping company because it needed running and I’m the most controllable person he can have in the position. Not because we havethatkind of relationship.” A pause. “You know as well as I do, Rowan and I have never had that father-son bonding.”
