That's what I see.
* * *
Back at the penthouse. Siobhan goes to change. I call Lex.
"The Romano cousin. Marco. He put his hands on my wife tonight."
"I saw."
"Handle it. Nothing permanent. Just a message."
Silence. Then, dry as bone: "The cousin or the jealousy?"
I stare at the phone. Lex has known me since birth. He doesn't miss. He doesn't ask unnecessary questions. And he doesn't ask this one lightly.
"Both," I say. Because lying to Lex is pointless and lying to myself is worse.
"Done." He hangs up.
I stand at the window. The city glitters below — my territory, my kingdom, the empire I inherited from a dead man and built into a kingdom. I control it all. Shipping lanes, supply routes, politicians, police. I control everything in this world except the woman in the next room and the way my chest tightens when she laughs.
The goodnight ritual plays out as it always does. The hallway. The doors. Thirty feet of hardwood and the words that get heavier every night.
"Goodnight, Nico."
"Goodnight, Siobhan."
She pauses at her door. Three seconds tonight. Her eyes find mine in the dark hallway and I see the zipper in them — the memory of my hands on her back, the shoulder I didn't kiss, the breath she held, and I held and neither of us released.
She goes in. I go in.
In my room I stand at the wall. The plaster is cool under my palm — the same spot, the nightly negotiation between what Iwant and what I'll allow myself to take. But tonight the wall feels different. Tonight my hand remembers the warmth of her skin through the zipper, the ridge of every vertebra, the three seconds where she waited for me to kiss her shoulder and I didn't.
I flex my fingers against the plaster. The wall gives nothing back.
Elena asked about the security rotation tonight. I gave her the full rundown — shift times, camera gaps, manual coverage protocols. She's family. That's what family does.
You protect them. And they protect you.
Chapter 12
Siobhan
Spark
* * *
My phone rings at nine in the morning while I'm rebuilding a risk matrix for a healthcare startup whose board still thinks ransomware is "an IT issue." Finn's name on the screen. I pick up without pausing my typing.
"Your husband's people visited that Romano kid who was chatting you up at dinner last night."
My fingers stop on the keyboard. "What?"
"Marco. The one with the jaw and the expensive watch." Finn's voice is light. Conversational. The way it gets when he's delivering information he knows will detonate. "He's walking. Mostly. But he'll think twice about touching a married woman's elbow again."
"Mostly?"
"Lex was persuasive."