Danger didn’t need to crossthe room to get to me. It sat beside me, clad in a black suit, scrolling through its phone. I kept my eyes on the car window while the conversation I’d overheard earlier played in my head on a loop.
I wasn’t supposed to hear any of it. But I did, and now I was sitting with its weight pressing against my chest.
Dmitri said loud and clear that I was a desperate woman. He was keeping me until he found someone named Luigi. A man I apparently knew. That last part was the one I couldn’t put down. He said it like knowing Luigi was the premise the rest of the plan rested on. I had turned that name over in my mind for the entire drive and came up with nothing. The name circled, landing nowhere useful.
My fingers curled against my lap.
If Dmitri believed it with such certainty, it had to be true. It meant that somewhere in my life, I crossed paths with a person named Luigi, and I didn’t know it.
This was never about the money I stole. If it were about themoney, it would have ended weeks ago. The fact that I was still sitting in the back of his car meant the money was never the point.
I leaned back into the seat and let my thoughts drift to Roman. He was there, and then he wasn’t. He didn’t find me again.
I couldn’t help wondering whether Cole and I were actually safe here or just comfortable. Was I mistaking one for the other? Dmitri’s world moved with controlled speed, and I let it feel like shelter. But control and safety weren’t the same thing. The life he was giving us sat above anything I could have built for Cole on my own. And I stopped asking what it was costing, which was a mistake. Comfort was the oldest distraction, and I walked Cole straight into the center.
The car slowed, and the mansion came into view. The gates opened ahead of us as we pulled through. Once we stopped, I straightened and reached for the doorknob to step out, but I hesitated.
I needed answers more than I needed distance.
If Luigi was who Dmitri wanted from me, then the fastest way out was through the information. He just needed to tell me who it was, and I would try to remember.
I turned to him. “Can we talk?”
He lifted his face from the phone and looked at me, giving nothing away on his expression.
“Go inside first,” he said. I noticed the driver hadn’t moved. The engine was still running. Dmitri had no intention of getting out of this car.
He was going somewhere.
I nodded and stepped out. The car rolled away just as I finished closing the door, and I stood there for a moment before turning toward the house.
I needed to talk to him tonight, even if the conversation went badly. I could face his anger. What I couldn’t face was a nightcarrying the weight of a name I didn’t recognize.
The house was quiet when I walked in. I climbed the stairs and stopped at Cole’s door, pushing it open enough to see him. He lay burrowed into his blankets with the complete trust of a child who believed he was safe. He looked like a boy who had received something good and had no reason to question it yet.
My chest pulled tight.
Closing the door, I went to Dmitri’s floor. I checked the clock, and it was a few minutes before eleven. I was going to wait for him, so I settled on a couch in the sitting room. My thoughts circled the same points without resolution, but at some point, my head rested on the armrest, and sleep caught up with me.
A weight woke me up not long after. I gasped and sat up, only to find Dmitri seated beside me.
“I’m sorry, I—” The words died when he leaned towards me and rested his head in my lap.
I went still.
He lay stretched out on the couch, one leg hanging over the edge, the other curled against the cushions. His eyes closed. He didn’t speak; he simply rested there, as though the world outside this room could wait, as though we didn’t argue earlier.
My hands hovered above him, with nowhere to go.
I watched his chest rise and fall as I tried to organize my thoughts into something sensible. My eyes traced his sharp lines that softened in sleep, the slope of his forehead, and the straight line of his nose. I lingered in his mouth which once dismantled my ability to think clearly. Those lips knew their work.
My hand moved, and I caught myself before it reached his hair. I pressed my palm back down and reminded myself that this man described me as desperate to another person a few hours ago. That the warmth spreading through my chest was a physiological response to proximity and nothing worth naming. And that I waited for him because I needed answers.
“Who is Luigi?” The question left my mouth, and the silence that followed had a specific quality. He would know that I eavesdropped. No lie would explain how I knew that name without admitting I heard them.
He didn’t answer.
“Dmitri?”