Romances de Zyvarelle

As I hear the locks click shut, every instinct I own goes cold and clear at once.I clock the door handles, useless. The windows, sealed. The driver's eyes in the rearview mirror, unreadable. I run the math on how fast I could get my elbow through glass if it came to that, how many seconds I'd have before anyone outside heard it happen."Miss?" Marcus glances back, brow furrowed, more confused than menacing. "You alright?”"The doors just locked.""Automatic. Kicks in over twenty miles an hour." He says it like he's explaining something obvious to a child, not a woman who nearly went through a window over it. "Mr. Marchetti's insistent about it. Something about a friend of his years back."I don't ask which friend. I don't trust my voice enough to try."Right," I say instead. "Of course."My pulse doesn't believe him the way my brain does. It takes three full minutes of watching normal Miami traffic slide past the window, streetlights, a couple arguing on a corner, a dog walker, befor

Adriano doesn't rush. He never does. He crosses the room like the crowd should already know to part for him, and it does, conversations trailing off in his wake without anyone seeming to notice they've stopped talking at all."Elena."I freeze.I hadn't told him my name.His gaze remains fixed on me, cold and deliberate, like he's testing whether the name is real. "That was an interesting purchase.""I saw something I wanted.""Clearly." His pale eyes hold mine, unreadable as ever. "May I speak with you? Privately."Beside me, I feel Rafael go still in a way that has nothing to do with charm."Of course," I say, before either brother can object, and let Adriano lead me a few steps away, toward the tall windows overlooking the estate's dark gardens."Tell me about yourself, Elena." He says it like a formality, though nothing about his eyes suggests it is one. "Where does a real estate investor come from, that she bids like that without blinking?""Miami, originally. Nothing glamorous t

The apartment is silent when I wake, the kind of silent that has weight to it.Daniel is already up, moving around the kitchen with a careful, deliberate quiet, like noise itself might start a conversation neither of us is ready to have.I get dressed without a word. He makes coffee without a word.We move around each other like two people who've memorized the choreography of avoiding a collision, and it's worse than shouting would have been.At the door, I pause, keys in hand, waiting for something. He doesn't look up from his coffee.I leave.Isa doesn't ask why my eyes are red when I walk in. She slides a folder across the table like nothing has changed."Rafael left the gala for something," Jake says, scanning his screen, "and word is the brothers are hosting a private auction in the evening, together. Invite only.""If you played your cards right yesterday, you'd already have the invitation," Isa says, not looking up from the folder."Looks like I played them just fine." I set th

Jake pulls up the file on his laptop, and the picture becomes clear fast. Rafael Marchetti has a standing appointment at this jeweler every Thursday which happens to be today, an old habit from before he could afford anything on the shelves.If I happen to be inside that store at the exact same hour, buying something no reasonable federal salary could explain, it isn't a coincidence. It's bait dressed up as fate."You want me to walk in and buy something worth more than my apartment," I say."The Bureau's money, not yours." Something almost like humor flickers across Isa's face. "Try not to enjoy it too much.""Please steal something while you're in there," Jake says. "As a personal favor.""I'm not stealing jewelry, Jake."Despite the fear still sitting cold in my chest from twelve hours ago, I laugh, and it feels like the first honest thing I've done since I walked into that gala.Few hours later, I'm standing inside a jewelry store that smells like money and cologne, trying on a wr

I let the question sit a second longer than I need to, just to make him wonder if I'll answer at all."The only other person in this room who looks half as bored as I feel." I say."So which one are you?" he asks, watching me over the rim of his glass. "Actress, singer, or something more interesting than either?""Real estate. Client dinner ran long, and someone owed me a favor with an extra invite." I keep my voice light, rehearsed enough to sound unrehearsed. "You?""Family business." He says it simply, like it explains everything and nothing at once.I file the deflection away, when a voice cuts through the noise behind me, bright with recognition, wrong in every way that matters."Alice? Alice… you've got some fucking nerve showing your face here."The name lands like a gunshot in a silent room.I turn, and my stomach drops through the marble floor. I know that face. Two years ago, under a different name, I put him away for fraud. He's staring at me now like he's still deciding wh

The warehouse still smells like blood and gasoline when I peel the wire from behind my ear.Three hours ago, this place was a cage. Now it's a crime scene, and I'm the reason six armed men are zip tied on concrete instead of counting the ransom they thought they'd already won.Marcus Ellery, a mid-level trafficker FDOCS has been building a case against for years, is alive. His daughter, Mia, is crying into a blanket by the ambulance, and I don't go to her, because I can't decide yet whether she'll look at me like a friend or a stranger who wore her friend's face for eight months."Vasquez." Cassie squeezes my shoulder, grinning. "Only you'd walk out of a hostage extraction looking like you just left brunch.""Skill," I say, "not luck."The team laughs. Someone hands me a lukewarm coffee like it's champagne, and for a moment I let them have this, the easy version of me. It never lasts.My phone buzzes against my ribs. Isa. Now.The bullpen goes quiet behind me as I walk it off toward h