"It will not." The lie comes out smooth, practiced. I have been lying to myself about Angelina Castellano for seven years. One more deception barely registers. "I will report in after initial assessment."
I end the call.
The living room monitor shows empty cushions where she sat moments before. The exterior camera captures the dark sedan, still motionless, the driver's phone screen now dark.
I pull up the traffic camera footage I was tracking earlier and find the sedan entering her street forty-seven minutes ago. It came from the east, drove the full length of the block, then parked in its current position with a clear sightline to her front door.
Surveillance. Someone else.
The realization should alarm me, but something cold and possessive unfurls in my chest.
Someone else thinks they have the right to watch her.
I save the footage, flag the vehicle for continued monitoring, and make a note to have Vanessa run the plates once I get a better angle. Then I grab my jacket and keys.
The monitors continue their silent vigil. I will review the footage later. I always do, scrubbing through hours of her life, cataloging details, feeding an obsession I stopped trying to justify years ago.
But tonight, something shifts.
Tonight, I stop watching through glass and step into her world.
The Fireblade cuts through the city like a knife through silk, engine growling beneath me as I weave through light traffic.
Piedmont's streets narrow as I climb into the hills. Quieter here. Old money and manicured lawns. I have driven these roads a hundred times on nights when the remote surveillance was not enough, when I needed to be closer even if closer meant sitting in the dark three blocks away like a lovesick fool.
Not lovesick. Strategic positioning. There is a difference.
There is no difference.
Her street. Her house. The porch light glowing exactly as it does on my monitors, but warmer now, more real. Three-dimensional in a way pixels never capture.
I kill the engine at the curb, and for ten seconds, I don't move.
The distance between my motorcycle and her front door spans seven years of watching through screens. Seven years of protecting from the shadows.
You left to protect her. And then you spent seven years making her your entire world, anyway.
The irony is not lost on me.
I dismount, remove my helmet, take the walkway to her porch with measured steps. My hand touches the railing, solid wood and cool from the early May night, worn smooth in places where hands have gripped it for years.
Her hands. Chesca's hands. The daily rhythm of a life I have only observed, never touched.
Until now.
The doorbell echoes through the house. I hear it differently than I expected. The monitor audio always carried a slight delay, a digital distance. In person, the sound is immediate, intimate. Real.
Footsteps approach. Heavy. Male. Not hers.
My shoulders tense slightly before I control the response. I knew Salvatore would be here. I planned for this. But knowing and experiencing are different things, and the protective instinct flares anyway.Someone else is in her house.
The door opens.
Salvatore Castellano stands framed in warm light, silver hair immaculate, dark eyes sharp as razors despite his age. His gaze moves over me with the careful assessment of a man who has survived decades in a world where underestimating people gets you killed.
I submit to the evaluation. Let him look. I let him see the surface, military bearing, professional composure, the blank face of a man who completes assignments without complications.
I doubt he remembers me. I was just another college boy her parents were waiting to get rid of.Not froma properfamily. Not useful to the business.Her mother's cold assessment. Her father's pointed silences. Sal had been a shadow in the background then, watching but not interfering.