My throat goes dry. Getting water means walking past him to reach the kitchen.
Not happening. I'd rather die of thirst.
"If you're going to invade my home, you can at least tell me why." I force my voice into something resembling judicial authority. "What exactly is this threat Sal mentioned?"
Cole's expression doesn't change. "That's need-to-know."
"I'm a federal judge." The words come out sharp, incredulous. "I have security clearance higher than most of the people in this city. I think Ineed to knowwhy a man I haven't seen in twelve years is suddenly standing in my living room."
"You'll be briefed when the time is right."
"When the—" I cut myself off, a bitter laugh escaping. "Are you serious right now? You show up unannounced, my uncle strong-arms me into letting you stay, and you won't even tell me what I'm supposedly in danger from?"
"It's not that I won't." Something shifts in his jaw, the first crack in that infuriating composure. "It's that I can't. Not yet. There are protocols—"
"Protocols." I spit the word like it tastes rotten. "You want to sleep under the same roof as my daughter, and you're hiding behindprotocols?"
His eyes flash, frustration, maybe, or something darker. "Angelina—"
"No." I hold up a hand, too exhausted for this fight but unable to stop. "You don't get to 'Angelina' me while refusing to answer basic questions. Either tell me what's going on or get out of my house."
The silence stretches between us, thick with twelve years of absence and whatever he's not saying.
"Tomorrow." His voice drops lower, almost gentle. "I'm sure they'll want to brief you soon. At our headquarters, where everything can be explained properly. With evidence."
Evidence. Dio, what kind of threat requires evidence?
"And tonight?"
"Tonight, you let me do my job." He holds my gaze, steady and certain. "You sleep. I watch. That's all."
It's not enough. Not nearly enough. But the exhaustion is winning, dragging at my limbs, and the fight drains out of me like water through cracked stone.
His hands hang loose at his sides. They're rougher now, harder. Fighter's hands, scarred and capable. Not the soft student hands I remember tracing patterns on my bare shoulder while we talked about everything and nothing in his cramped apartment.
I cross my arms tighter, trying to cover what my thin shirt doesn't hide. He tracks the movement, gaze returning to my face with something I refuse to name flickering in those dark eyes.
"You need to get out." My voice sounds steadier than I feel.Small victory."Tonight. You can stay outside. But I'm not letting a stranger stay here."
Stranger.The word lands deliberately, a weapon meant to wound.
The openness in his face shutters instantly. Something dark flashes behind those eyes before he controls it, stuffs it down wherever he keeps all the things he doesn't let people see.
Good. Hurt. You earned it.
"I'm not a stranger, Angelina."
The way he says my name, full and with that rough edge that makes my stomach flip, sends heat through me I immediately crush.
That's fury. Fury at his presumption. Nothing else.
"You were." My chin lifts. "Before college. Before any of it. And you are again. Someone I don't know. Someone I don't want to know."
Fifteen years since we first met in that overcrowded lecture hall. Twelve since he left. All that time has turned him into this, a stranger wearing a familiar face, claiming intimacy he surrendered when he walked away.
"You think time makes me not know you?"
I don't have an answer to that, because what does he meanknow you? How can he claim knowledge of someone he hasn't seen in over a decade?