Chapter 15

 

Nico’s POV

Adrian’s report arrived before sunrise.

I hadn’t slept. The photograph remained on my desk, turned facedown because every time I looked at it, I imagined my hands around Ethan Hale’s throat.

Adrian entered carrying a thick folder and placed it in front of me. Leon followed, although no one had invited him.

“Ethan Alexander Hale,” Adrian began. “Thirty-two. Chief executive of Hale International. Hotels, private resorts, property development, and logistics holdings across the United States and Europe.”

“I know what his company owns.”

“The public companies aren’t the problem.”

That caught my attention.

Adrian opened the folder and pushed several documents toward me. “His father used the logistics division to move sensitive cargo for governments and private military contractors. Ethan sold most of those contracts after taking control, but he kept the security network.”

“Men?”

“Former intelligence officers, soldiers, and private contractors. Hale isn’t part of our world, but he has enough protection to make reaching him complicated.”

“Nothing is complicated. Only expensive.”

Leon dropped into the chair opposite me. “Or you could leave him alone.”

Neither Adrian nor I acknowledged him.

“Does Hale know who Arie is?” I asked.

“We found no evidence that he knew before hiring her agency. Mr. Hart introduced her by her full name during the hotel tour. Hale may recognise the Romano surname, but there is nothing proving he connected her to you.”

“Not yet.”

Adrian closed the folder. “His interest appears personal.”

My jaw tightened.

“How personal?”

“He requested her for the account, worked with her privately several times, and attended the celebration knowing she would be there.”

“Then he has developed a habit that needs correcting.”

Leon leaned forward. “He kissed her. She stopped him. That should be the end of it.”

“It will be when I decide it is.”

“You have a wife.”

The wedding band on my hand suddenly felt heavier. Bianca had placed it there in front of hundreds of witnesses, binding our families together with a promise neither of us had mistaken for love.

Arie had looked at that ring as though it had erased everything between us.

To me, it was only metal.

“Bianca has my name,” I said. “She has the position her father negotiated for her.”

“And what does Arie have?”

“Me.”

Leon laughed bitterly. “That is exactly the problem.”

The office door opened, and Bianca entered without waiting for permission. She wore a silk robe beneath a dark coat, and irritation sharpened her otherwise perfect features.

“Why is the aircraft being prepared?”

No one answered immediately.

Her gaze travelled between us before settling on me. “Where are you going?”

“Seattle.”

“Why?”

“Business.”

“At six in the morning?”

“The hour doesn’t change what needs to be done.”

Bianca crossed her arms. “We have dinner with Minister Bellini tonight. My father arranged it weeks ago.”

“Leon will attend in my place.”

“I wasn’t aware I married Leon.”

My brother rose. “Please leave me out of this marriage.”

Bianca ignored him. “You disappeared repeatedly during our honeymoon. You have spent more time inside this office than in our room since we returned, and now you’re leaving the country without an explanation.”

Our room.

The suite belonged to Bianca, no matter what the staff believed. I had entered it only when appearances demanded it. The photographs printed in magazines showed a devoted husband, but cameras captured only the moments I permitted them to see.

“I don’t require your permission to travel,” I said.

“I am not asking for authority over you. I am asking not to be publicly humiliated when my husband abandons an important dinner.”

“Tell them an emergency required my attention.”

“What emergency?”

Arie’s face appeared in my mind.

“The only one that matters.”

Bianca’s expression changed. She was too intelligent not to hear what I had failed to conceal.

“There is someone else.”

Leon looked toward the window. Adrian became intensely interested in the folder.

I stood and buttoned my jacket. “Our marriage has never depended on exclusivity.”

“My father might disagree.”

“Your father wanted the Contini name protecting his businesses. He has it.”

“And what did you want?”

Power. Access to ports controlled by the Romano family. Political protection for operations my enemies had spent years trying to expose.

I had obtained all of it.

The price had been watching Arie leave me.

“That is not your concern,” I answered.

Bianca’s face lost its colour, but she moved aside as I approached the door. For the first time, I wondered whether Arie had been right about the cruelty of what we had done. Bianca understood the arrangement, but understanding didn’t make humiliation painless.

I forced the thought away.

Love had no place in the decision that created our marriage.

Unfortunately, it controlled the decision taking me to Seattle.

Leon followed me into the corridor. “If you drag Arie back, she will never forgive you.”

“She will.”

“You sound very certain.”

“I know her.”

“You knew the girl who loved you before the wedding. You don’t know the woman who learned to live without you.”

His words followed me down the staircase.

At the estate entrance, several vehicles waited to take us to the private airfield. Adrian handed instructions to the security team while I stopped beside the first car.

“I’m coming with you,” Leon said.

“No.”

“Someone needs to stop you from turning this into a war.”

“If Hale wants a war, he will have one.”

“This isn’t about Hale. It is about Arie making a choice you don’t like.”

“She made that choice because she believes I abandoned her.”

“You married someone else. What would you call it?”

I turned toward him. “I would call it the only decision that kept every enemy I have from discovering how much she means to me.”

“You hid her so well that she finally understood she deserved daylight.”

For a moment, neither of us spoke.

I hated him for saying it because some part of me knew it was true.

“Stay here,” I ordered. “Keep Bianca and her father satisfied. No one learns why I left.”

Leon’s expression hardened. “And Arie?”

“I will handle Arie.”

“That is what I’m afraid of.”

I entered the car before he could continue.

Hours later, Italy disappeared beneath the clouds. I sat alone inside the aircraft, studying reports I didn’t absorb. The photograph remained inside my jacket.

I had planned to give Arie more time. I had thought the distance would burn away her anger until only her love remained. Instead, every day without me had built another piece of a life in which I no longer existed.

A job she had earned.

An apartment she had chosen.

A friend who made her laugh.

And now a man who touched her as though he had the right.

The aircraft landed in Seattle beneath a sky the colour of steel. Adrian had arranged a private residence, vehicles, and men who could operate without attracting the attention of American authorities.

I could have gone directly to Arie’s apartment.

I didn’t.

Anger had brought me across the ocean, but anger would not be enough to bring her home. If I appeared at her door tonight, she would fight me before I said a word. Arie needed to remember us before she understood that leaving again was no longer an option.

A black vehicle waited beyond the private terminal. I entered, and Adrian handed the driver an address.

It wasn’t the residence.

It was Arie’s office.

We stopped across the street shortly before six. Through the rain-covered window, I watched employees leave the building in groups. Then Arie appeared beside the blonde woman from the photographs.

She wore a cream coat over her office clothes, and her hair moved in the wind as she laughed at something her friend said. The sound couldn’t reach me through the glass, but I remembered it perfectly.

My hand closed around the photograph inside my jacket.

Arie stopped beneath the building’s entrance while her friend searched for something inside her bag. She looked thinner than she had in Italy, but stronger too. Seattle hadn’t broken her.

It had taught her that she could survive me.

Then Ethan Hale walked through the doors behind her.

He said something that made Arie turn. Her smile disappeared, replaced by uncertainty. Hale maintained his distance, but his attention never left her face.

At least he had learned something from the terrace.

Arie eventually nodded and walked away with her friend. Hale remained beneath the entrance, watching until she disappeared around the corner.

I understood that look because I had worn it long before him.

He wanted her.

But he did not know her. He had never held her through nightmares or felt her fall asleep against his chest. He didn’t know how she took her coffee when she was tired or how she pretended not to cry when she was hurt.

He knew the woman she was becoming.

I knew every version that came before.

“Follow her?” the driver asked.

“No.”

Not tonight.

I had crossed an ocean to reclaim her, but I would not waste the moment by acting without control. First, I would learn every detail of the life she had built. Then I would remove each obstacle standing between us.

And when Arie finally opened her door and saw me waiting, she would understand that changing her number had never made her unreachable.

I watched Ethan Hale return inside the building.

He had no idea that the man whose place he was trying to take had arrived in Seattle.

Soon, he would.