It’s not a guest room. It’s a suite. A large bedroom with a king-sized bed, a sitting area with leather chairs, and a wall of bookshelves. There’s a door that leads to a bathroom and another that looks like it leads to a walk-in closet.
"This is my room," Alessio says, closing the door and thumbing the biometric bolt. "Reinforced, wired to my feed, one door from the medical bay. No one gets in but me. You don’t have to like it. You just have to be alive in the morning."
I turn to face him, my heart skipping a beat.
"Your room? You said you were showing me tomyroom."
"In this house, there is no safer place for you than with me," he says, stepping toward me. He doesn't stop until he’s inches away, his presence overwhelming the space. "The Bellantis know you’re here. The compound’s already on lockdown—guards doubled, Vincenzo pulling every camera off that SUV. Until we know how deep they can reach, you don’t leave my sight."
"I'm perfectly capable of locking a door, Alessio," I say, my voice shaky.
"Not against the people who are coming for you," he says, his hands coming up to frame my face. His thumbs stroke my cheekbones, his touch so tender it makes my chest ache. "You’ve spent ten years running, Amara. You’ve spent ten years being the only person looking out for you. But that ends tonight."
He leans down, his forehead resting against mine.
"I've been looking for you for a long time," he whispers. "I didn't know your name, I didn't know your face, but I knew you were out there. The one person who could help me finish this. And now that I have you, I’m never letting you go."
The intensity of his words, the raw, feral honesty in his voice, it’s more than I can handle. I should push him away. I should tell him he’s crazy, that we just met, that this isn't how things work.
But as I look into his eyes, I see the same grief, the same obsession, the same need that has been driving me for a decade. We are two sides of the same coin, two hunters who finally found each other in the dark.
"I have some of the codes," I say, my voice barely audible. "Enough to prove the contract on Curtis wasn’t isolated. Not enough to finish it alone."
Alessio’s eyes go black, his grip on my face tightening just a fraction.
"And I have the accounts they touched," he says. "Not all of them. Enough to know where to cut next, Amara."
He pulls away then, his hands dropping to his sides. He crosses to a wall panel, presses his thumb to a plate that shouldn’t exist, and slides out an encrypted drive and a single scorched page—one salvaged sheet from a burned field notebook. Not a ledger. A wound with a serial number.
The ledger.
He walks back to me and holds it out.
"This is it," he says. "Everything I’ve gathered in eleven years. Every secret, every lie, every betrayal."
I reach out and touch the leather, the surface cool and worn. This is what I’ve been looking for. This is the piece that makes the puzzle complete.
"Why show me this?" I ask, looking up at him. "You don’t even know me."
He doesn’t hand it over. He turns the drive in his fingers, then sets one page in front of me. One page. No more.
"I know enough," he says, his voice low and dangerous. "I know that you loved your brother enough to spend your life hunting his killer. I know that you’re brave enough to break into my clinic in the middle of the night. And I know you’re the only person outside this family who has bled for this trail the way I have."
He steps closer, his hand coming up to cup the back of my neck.
"We’re going to find him, Amara. We’re going to burn every wall he built to hide behind. And then, when it’s all over, we’re going to figure out what happens next."
He leans in, his mouth barely touching mine—not enough to be a kiss, but enough to feel like a line being crossed.
"For now," he whispers against my lips, "you sleep. Tomorrow, we go to war."
He pulls away and walks toward the bathroom, leaving me standing in the middle of the room, the ledger clutched to my chest.
I look at the bed, then at the door, then at the book in my hands. I’ve spent ten years running. I’ve spent ten years being a shadow.
But tonight, as I lie down in Alessio Costa’s bed, I realize I’m not the woman chasing numbers through the dark anymore. I’m the proof they failed to bury.
And God help anyone who gets in our way.
