He was deflecting. Sabin only reached for the jokes when the truth was too bad to say out loud. She’d learned that young — he’d been doing it her whole life, wrapping the worst things in humor so she wouldn’t have to feel the full weight of them. It had never actually worked. She always felt it anyway.
She exhaled hard. “When this is over?—”
“I know,” he interrupted with a faint smile. “You’ll bust me out, we’ll get margaritas on a beach somewhere, and you’ll yell at me properly. Like old times.”
“Yeah,” she whispered. “Like old times.”
His gaze shifted to something over her shoulder. “Don’t look now, but I think our time’s nearly up. Guards are getting restless.”
She refused to acknowledge those assholes until they made her. “What do I need to know about the Villa? Have you been there recently?”
“Mais, yeah. Security’s tighter than it was last time you were there. They upgraded after an incident with a Saudi prince.”
“Three minutes,” one of the guards announced.
Sabin’s eyes narrowed slightly. “You remember the combination?”
“Of course.” The date their parents met. It was one of their dad’s favorite stories to tell—how he’d seen their mom across a hotel lobby in Martinique and fell head over heels in love, how their mom had taken one look at him and shot him down flat, leaving him flummoxed because until that moment, no woman had ever said “no”to Jean-Luc Cavalier.
Sabin was a lot like their father in that way.
The resemblance was striking sometimes. Vivi had inherited their mother’s coloring and height, but Sabin was their father through and through—the charm, the recklessness, the absolute conviction that everything would work out in the end. Even now, with his fingers broken and his face bruised, he had that look. The Cavalier certainty.
“I’m getting you out of here,” she told him.
“I know you are.” Sabin’s eyes softened. “And Viv? When it comes down to the wire—and it will—trust Dom. Whatever happened between you two, he’s still the best. And he still?—”
“Time’s up.” The guard stalked forward and yanked her up by the arm.
Sabin surged against his restraints. “Don’t fucking touch her.”
“It’s okay.” She shook off the guard’s hand and straightened her shirt. “I’ll see you soon.”
“You’d better. You owe me margaritas on the beach and a lecture. You be smart, p’tite. You be safe.” His eyes held hers,communicating everything they couldn’t say. “Forgive him, Viv. It’s time. Life’s too short for the kind of grudges you like to hold.”
The guards flanked her as the door opened. She took one last look at her brother—broken fingers, bruised face, still somehow the strongest person she knew—and then let them lead her away.
The walk back through the corridors was a blur. Her mind raced with what Sabin had told her. Dom had been following orders. Sabin’s orders. The person she’d been furious with for three years had been carrying out her brother’s wishes, taking the blame so Sabin wouldn’t have to.
It changed everything.
But it also changed nothing.
nine
Daphne reachedfor her coffee mug and found it empty. Again. She set it down with a thunk, frustration bubbling up beneath the exhaustion. Dom had been gone for thirty-six hours now. Thirty-six hours in Praetorian’s hands. Anything could have happened in that time.
Don’t think about it. Focus on the data.
She pushed her glasses up and turned back to the screens. Helios Properties stared back at her — a shell company three layers deep, registered in Cyprus but with banking ties to Greece. Specifically, property acquisitions in the Cyclades islands over the past eighteen months. She’d found it two hours ago and had been pulling threads ever since, watching the program build its visualization: a web of interconnected nodes that brightened where patterns emerged.
She wasn’t imagining it. There was a concentration in Naxos.
She expanded the Naxos connection, pulling property records, satellite imagery, shipping manifests — anything that might indicate unusual activity or security upgrades consistent with Praetorian’s operational signature. The images populated her leftmost screen, downloading in chunks of gray and blue.
The Tech Lab door whooshed open behind her, admitting a waft of fresh coffee smell that made her stomach growl. “If that’s not coffee for me, I might actually kill you.”
“Good morning to you, too, sunshine.” Celeste appeared at her elbow and set down a steaming paper cup and a bag that smelled like the bagels from the deli across the street. “Please tell me you haven’t been here all night.”