“And if Vincent is there?”
“He will be.”
Emilia set down the folder. “Why are you doing this?”
Dominic was quiet for a moment. Then he said, “Because you came to me with the truth when lying would have been easier. Because in five days you found cracks my people missed in five weeks. Because Vincent Barrett had something extraordinary in his hands and mistook it for decoration.”
Heat rose again, but this time it was not embarrassment. It was something slower, more treacherous.
“I’m not a weapon,” she said softly.
His eyes held hers. “No,” he said. “You’re a mind. Weapons are simpler.”
The drive to New Haven the next evening felt unreal, as if she were being transported toward a version of herself she had not agreed to become but had no intention of refusing. She wore a navy dress Nora had somehow produced from thin air, elegant enough for respect, plain enough not to look theatrical. Dominic sat beside her in the back seat this time, not touching her, which made her aware of him in every inch of space between them.
When the car stopped one block from the restaurant, he turned toward her.
“If anything feels wrong, you leave.”
“I thought the point was to stay.”
“The point is to survive.”
She looked at him. In the low light, his face seemed even harder than usual, but there was strain beneath it, a restraint that had less to do with strategy than he would ever admit.
“My father won’t drag me out in public,” she said.
“Your father isn’t the one I’m worried about.”
That settled between them, heavier than either expected.
Emilia opened the door, then paused. “Dominic.”
“Yes?”
“Thank you. For listening that night.”
Something shifted in his expression, very slightly. “Go remind your father who his daughter is.”
Anthony Moretti was waiting at a corner table beneath a wall of dark glass reflecting the harbor lights. Two men stood behind him. Vincent sat to his right already, immaculate in black, concern arranged across his handsome face so carefully it might have been stitched there.
When Vincent saw Emilia, the concern cracked.
For one brief, shining instant, she watched him fail to hide fear.
It gave her strength.
“Sit,” her father said.
She sat opposite them, placed the folder on the table, and folded her hands to keep from shaking.
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