CHAPTER EIGHT 

Armando's POV

"She is a friend of mine," Zahara said, too quickly—the way people speak when they have already known how far their truth is about to travel.

"...She has been going through a difficult time. I did not want to bring my phone in case it made her feel like a burden."

It was a reasonable explanation but it was also not the truth. Because I had built a career on knowing the difference between the two, long before I ever needed to use that skill on my own wife.

"Eleven calls, I said, that's not the behavior of someone worried about being a burden. It is the behavior of someone who needed you and could not reach you."

"She tends to worry." Zahara held my gaze without flinching—which told me more than the words did. A woman with nothing to hide does not need to work that hard at looking calm. 

"I am sorry if my absence caused concern. It will not happen again."

I let the silence stretch between us—watching for the crack that usually came when I pushed a little further, the small tell that separated a genuine explanation from a rehearsed one.

But, she gave me nothing. Whatever she was protecting, she had already decided it was worth the discomfort of my suspicion.

"Goodnight, Armando" she said, and climbed the stairs without waiting for the permission she did not need. 

Leaving me standing in the hallway with a story that fit together—too neatly to be entirely honest.

I did not sleep. I rarely did, but that night the insomnia felt less like the familiar curse I had carried for a decade, and more like a useful thing, a reason to be awake when the rest of the house had gone quiet enough to hear whatever moved through it.

I went to my study instead of my bed, and opened the file Grace had left for me earlier—observing notes from Doctor Ellery about Fiona's latest bloodwork, numbers that meant nothing encouraging no matter how many times I reread them.

And, somewhere beneath my frustration of watching my aunt fade by degrees—a smaller, sharper thought kept surfacing. Yvonne.

A name that had slipped from Fiona's lips like something she had spent decades keeping buried, and a name that Zahara had somehow already known to ask about.

I was still turning it over near midnight when I heard the soft click of a door, down the hall. Followed by a—careful and deliberate footsteps moving toward the staircase.

I found her at the bottom of the stairs, coat already on; her car keys in hand. Moving with the practiced quiet step of someone, who had spent years learning how to leave a house without waking it.

"Going somewhere again?" I asked, and she startled, just slightly, before recovering into the same composed stillness she always wore like a second skin.

"I told you. My friend needs me."

"At midnight?"

"Grief does not keep business hours, Armando. I will be back before morning."

There was an edge in her voice now—thin but unmistakable. Like the sound of a woman who had answered enough questions for one night and had no patience left for more of them.

"You went to see her this afternoon. For six hours."

"And now she needs me again." She reached for the front door, and something in the set of her shoulders told me—that whatever waited for her on the other side of that drive mattered more to her than my permission did.

"I am not asking you to understand it. I am telling you where I will be Armando."

I could have stopped her. I could have demanded the address, the friend's full name, or some solid details which can be enough to hold up under the kind of scrutiny I applied to every contract that crossed my desk.

But instead, I found myself studying her...watching the tight grip of her hand on the strap of her bag; the way her eyes kept flicking toward the door as though the seconds she stands here cost her something she could not afford to spend.

"Drive safely," I said.

She blinked, clearly braced for a harder fight than the one I gave her, and something like relief moved across her face—before she caught it and smoothed it away. 

"Thank you."

She left within minutes...taillights sweeping across the gravel drive before disappearing past the gate, and I stood at the window long after the sound of the engine faded into the ordinary hum of the city.

I told myself I had to let her go because pressing further would have accomplished nothing tonight—that a woman determined to keep a secret rarely surrenders it under direct interrogation. That was true though.

But, it was also not the whole reason, and I was honest enough with myself, alone in an empty hallway at midnight; to admit the rest of it.

Some part of me did not want to catch her in a lie. Some part of me wanted the explanation to be exactly what she claimed—a friend in crisis, nothing more complicated than ordinary loyalty stretched thin by an ordinary emergency.

That part of me was—I suspected, and already a mistake I did not have the patience to examine tonight.

I returned to my study instead of my bed, poured a drink I did not intend to finish, and sat quietly; which has become a norm and has turned to the only constant companion of my adult life.

My mind kept circling back to the same details, refusing to let the night close cleanly the way it usually did.

A name that should have meant nothing to my new wife but clearly meant something. A friend who called eleven times in a single afternoon and inspired a midnight departure with the kind of urgency reserved for family, not friendship. A woman who had answered every question I asked without ever actually answering it.

Looking down at my phone in front of me, slowly I picked it up before I had fully decided to, scrolling to a contact I kept for exactly this kind of situation—a man whose discretion I had paid for more than once in the years, since I inherited a company built on secrets worth protecting.

He answered on the second ring, his voice rough with sleep he clearly did not mind losing for the right price.

"Mr. Ivas. It is late."

"I need your eyes on someone. Discreetly. Starting tonight." I said, watching the empty drive through the window, the space where her car had disappeared into the dark—still holding my attention like a wound that refused to close.

"Who am I watching?"

I looked at the space in the drive one more time before I answered, already certain that whatever I found would change something between us that I was not entirely prepared to lose.

"My wife.”