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“There is no security at the private terminal, Vinny.”

“Semantics. There’s still a guy with a clipboard who looks at your ID and judges you for being late.”

I groan and slump further. “He’s going to be so smug. You know how he gets when he’s right about something. That little half-smile. The one where you can’t tell if he’s amused or planning a murder.”

“Sounds like my Tuesday.”

“Shut up.”

We hit the expressway and Vinny opens it up, the SUV eating miles in no time at all.

“So,” I say, watching the city thin out as we approach the airport, “you really have no idea where we’re going?”

Vinny’s expression doesn’t change. “Nope.”

“Bullshit.”

“Swear to God.”

“Shame on you for swearing when you’re lying.”

Instead of looking chastened, he outright laughs. Loudly. “Listen, even with God on my side, I wouldn’t betray Domenico. And he’s sworn me to secrecy.”

Sighing, I give up questioning Vinny since it’s kind of not fair. Not to him, and not to my husband, who has been smugly and infuriatingly silent about where we’re going. One year of marriage, and the man still treats information like it’s contraband.

I’ve tried everything—seduction, bribery, outright demands—and all I’ve gotten for my trouble is him smirking and saying, “You’ll find out when we get there, baby.”

It should be annoying, and it is. But it’s also exciting.

The private terminal comes into view, a low-slung building with more glass than seems structurally sound, and my stomach does a little flip.

Vinny pulls up to the curb and kills the engine. “Go,” he says. “I’ll get your bag.”

“Which you will then use as a shield when I tell Domenico this was all your fault.”

“I accept this fate with dignity.”

I’m out of the car before he finishes the sentence, already running.

I burst through the doors to the private terminal with my hair coming loose from its ponytail and my cheeks flushed from running, and there he is.

Domenico stands near the entrance with his hands in the pockets of his charcoal suit, looking for all the world like a man who’s been waiting exactly as long as he intended to wait and not a second more.

Donna stands beside him in a neat navy dress, her hands clasped in front of her, and three of Domenico’s men are arranged at polite intervals around the room like furniture that happens to be armed.

My husband’s eyes find mine the second I enter, and that half-smile—the one that lives rent-free in the particular chamber of my brain reserved for things that make me both furious and weak in the knees—spreads across his face like he’s been saving it just for me.

“You’re late,” he says.

“Vinny’s fault,” I say immediately, striding toward him. “He parked on the wrong side of campus, and then he drove like my grandmother.”

From behind me, Vinny makes a sound of profound betrayal. “She’s lying. She held the professor hostage with questions about tax law. I had to physically remove her from the building.”

“I was engaged in scholarly discourse,” I correct.

Domenico pinches the bridge of his nose, which he often does when Vinny and I argue. The first few times he witnessed it, he looked annoyed. When we started sharing inside jokes, he looked downright murderous.

It took a while for him to accept that whatever closeness had developed between Vinny and me was completely harmless.