I move toward her without making the conscious decision to do so, my feet carrying me across the carpet until I'm standing close enough to touch her. Close enough to see the faint tremor in her lower lip that she's trying to control, the way her fingers are clenched around her father's medal.
My hands come up to frame her face, thumbs against her cheekbones, fingers curving behind her ears. The same way I held her last night when she was falling apart, except now we're both fully clothed and standing in her chambers with a death threat hanging over us like smoke.
"Twenty-four days." My voice drops low, stripped of everything I've spent a lifetime building. The control, the discipline, the careful walls that keep people at a safe distance."That's how long you have. That's how longwehave. Unless I find the Gardener and end this, in twenty-four days—"
I can't finish it. The words stick in my throat like broken glass.
Yatto.I finally have her, and someone is trying to take her away.
"I will not lose you again." The words come out rough, raw, nothing like the measured speech I've cultivated for twenty years of military and intelligence work. "Do you understand me? I spent seven years watching you through screens, telling myself it was enough, telling myself I was protecting you by staying away. I am done staying away. I am done watching from a distance while you face threats alone."
Her breath catches. Her hands come up to grip my wrists, not pulling away, just holding on.
"Cole—"
"I failed you once. I left, and you ended up with him, and I wasn't there when—" I stop, force myself to breathe, to think. "I will not fail you again. Whatever it takes. Whatever lines I have to cross.Wakarimasu ka?Do you understand?"
She stares at me, eyes bright with something I can't name. Fear, maybe, or hope, or some complicated mixture of both that doesn't have a word in English or Japanese.
"I understand," she whispers.
The air between us grows thick with everything we're not saying. Her hands tighten on my wrists, and I feel her pulse hammering against my palms, quick and hard, matching the rhythm of my own heartbeat.
My head drops an inch. Less. Her lips part and her breath touches my jaw, warm and unsteady. This close I can see every gold fleck in her brown eyes, the faint tremble in her lower lip, the way her chest rises and falls with shallow breaths.
My phone buzzes.
We don't jump apart. We separate like a wound reopening, slow, pulling, reluctant. Her hands slide off my wrists and my jaw locks against the urge to pull her back.
I check the screen. Kade. "Brown's autopsy is fast-tracked. Preliminary tox screen shows the same compound—pharmaceutical-grade belladonna derivatives. I'm adding two cameras to the hallway outside her chambers and rotating the shift overlap from fifteen minutes to thirty."
"Copy."
"And Cole?" A pause weighted with things he won't say over an unsecured line. "Don't let this compromise you."
Too late. Seven years too late.But I don't say that.
"Send the detail roster when it's ready."
I hang up.
Across the room, Angelina has retreated behind her desk. Her pen sliding across a legal pad with a mechanical movement, taking notes on something that probably doesn't need notes, giving her hands something to do besides shake.
Judge Castellano is back in place. The mask smooth, the armor polished, every crack sealed over like it was never there.
But I saw what was underneath. I've been seeing it for days now, and I can't unsee it.
"I have a hearing at ten," she says without looking up. Voice level. Professional. Like none of this just happened.
I take my position by the door. Back straight, sightlines clear, hands loose at my sides. The posture of a man doing his job. Except my job requires objectivity, and objectivity requires distance, and there is no distance left between us. Not after last night.
"I'll be here."
Her pen pauses for just a moment. Then it resumes its steady movement across the page.
Two professionals in a room. Nothing personal between them.
We are both lying, and we both know it, and neither of us says a word.