"If someone comes for me, I want to be able to fight back. Not just hide behind your security detail while men like Andreas die for me."
"Siobhan—"
"You told me I'm a target. You told me Viktor wants me specifically. I'm not going to sit in this penthouse waiting for someone else to solve this. Either teach me or I'll find someone who will."
He studies me. The boss is running scenarios. I've learned to see the calculations behind his eyes, the rapid assessment of risk and capability and tactical value. But underneath the boss, the husband is looking at his wife who refuses to be a hostage in her own life.
"Tomorrow. I'll teach you myself."
"Good."
I turn to leave. Stop in the doorway.
"And Nico? Stop shutting me out. I'm not a civilian you're protecting. I'm your partner. You said together. Act like it."
The words land. I watch them hit the way my words always hit him. Not softly. He opens his mouth. Closes it. Nods once.
I go to the living room. Work until midnight. The anger doesn't fade. It sharpens.
Late. Past midnight. I find him still at the desk, still in the bedroom, still in war mode. The maps have changed. New positions, new intel, the constantly shifting geography of a conflict he's been managing since his father was killed and that will continue until Viktor Reznikov is dead or he is. He hasn't come to bed. He hasn't come to me. Three days of being the boss and the man who washed my hair has disappeared into the machinery of survival.
I miss him. Not the boss. The man.
I walk into his room. I don't knock. The knock was a threshold I crossed three nights ago and I don't need permission to enter this room anymore. The door is open. It's been open since I walked through it in silk and bare feet and changed everything.
He's at the desk. Laptop. Phone. The half-reassembled Beretta beside his elbow. Shadows under his eyes deep enough to hold water.
"Come to bed."
"I have work?—"
"It'll be there tomorrow. Come to bed." I cross to him. Put my hand on his shoulder. The tension under my palm is immense. Three days of holding a war together with his hands and his mind and his refusal to show weakness. "Let me help."
He resists. One second. Two. The tactical brain insisting that the maps need reviewing, the positions need checking, the war needs him more than the bed does.
He closes the laptop.
I undress him. Not the way I undressed him three nights ago. That was desire, urgency, the claiming of a man I'd spent two weeks wanting. This is care. I untie his shoes. Unbutton his shirt. He lets me, the way a man who has never been taken care of lets someone take care of him. Stiffly at first, then all at once. I pull the shirt off his shoulders and see the tension in his body, the locked muscles, the rigid spine of a man who hasn't exhaled in three days.
I pull him to bed. He goes stiff for a moment. The tactical brain reactivating, the weight of Andreas and the photographs and the war. Then I press him down against the pillow and fit myself against his side and his face finds my neck and his arms come around me and his whole body releases. A long, shuddering exhale. The sound of a man putting something heavy down.
I hold him. His head on my chest. My fingers in his hair. Three nights ago, I lay in this exact position reversed. My head on his chest, his arm around my waist, the hollow below his collarbone. Tonight, the hollow is mine. Tonight, I'm the shelter and he's the one who needs holding and the fact that he lets me, this man who lets no one see him break, is worth more than every word he's ever said.
"I've got you," I whisper into his hair.
He doesn't answer. His breathing slows. His grip on me loosens into sleep.
I hold him the way he held me, and I stay awake the way he stayed awake, and tomorrow I'm going to learn to put a bullet in anything that threatens what we've built.
Chapter 20
Nico
Release
* * *
She learned to shoot.