Page 63 of Lethal in Pink

Caruso moves in closer, his sandalwood cologne making my stomach turn as he offers a smooth, practiced smile. “Skip the early start. Have breakfast with me at my penthouse. I'll have my driver bring you back afterward.”

“A dangerous proposition,” I answer, letting a soft laugh escape my lips. “Let me sleep on it.”

I step away before he can push further, leaving him with the false impression of a chase he’s actively winning.

The synthetic capsule triggers the arrhythmia shortly after midnight the following evening.

By the time his housekeeper raises the alarm on Thursday morning and the local authorities sign off on a natural heart failure, I am fifty miles south of Florence. The news alert Pen just sent flashes across my phone screen as my train barrels toward Rome at two hundred kilometers an hour—a brief obituary featuring a decade-old photograph of Caruso looking young, bronzed, and invincible.

I dismiss the notification with a flick of my thumb. The Claudette persona is filed away, her existence like it never even happened. In the train's sunlit window, my reflection returns to normal—Amiyah Lane, taking a deep breath as the single obligation of her summer vanishes behind her.

Rome receives me with the utter indifference of an ancient city used to passing strangers. I eat carbonara at a quiet trattoria in Testaccio where the waiter calls me bella without a hint of performance. I stay in a small hotel near Piazza Navona, the sheets crisp and cool against my skin. I walk until my calves ache, tracing the smooth, worn cobblestones of Trastevere.

No covers.

No targets.

Just two weeks of pure, unscripted vacation before I have to board a flight back to LA.

I tell myself I am not thinking about Jae Kim.

It is a lie I maintain right up until I’m standing on the Spanish Steps at four in the afternoon. The summer sun hammers the stone into a blinding, radiant white, crowds of tourists lounging across the travertine steps. I take a quick photo of my gelato—pistachio and dark chocolate—and send it to Jae without a single word of text.

My phone vibrates three minutes and forty-seven seconds later. A voice memo. Thirteen seconds long.

I lift the phone to my ear and press play.

Jae’s voice comes through—low, almost a whisper, the familiar lazy cadence muffled as if he’s trying not to wake an entire household. In the background, there's the faint, distinct metallic click of a stove burner trying to ignite, followed by the quiet rustle of a noodle packet.

“I’m currently attempting to make late-night ramen without alerting my entire family,” he murmurs. A beat of quiet, and then he lets out a low, breathless laugh into the mic. “I just dropped the seasoning packet under the counter, hotshot. It’s a tragedy. Anyway…hope Europe isn't too boring without me there. Send me some of that gelato before I starve.”

The clip cuts off at thirteen seconds.

I play it twice.

The casual, whispered familiarity of his voice lands right beneath my ribs, spreading a heavy, inconvenient warmth through my chest that has nothing to do with the Italian heat.

I step off the travertine steps and walk back toward my hotel through the cooling evening shade. My free hand swings loosely at my side as I lift the phone to my ear once more, pressing play, and let the sound of his voice fill the quiet air around me for the third time.

Chapter twenty-one

Jae

The black lacquer table is long enough for eight people, but only three of us sit at it. Morning light comes in through the tall eastern windows, catching the steam rising from my mother’s tea. The room is lined with dark oak paneling that swallows sound so completely you can hear the faint thump of my father’s reading glasses hitting his nose. It’s the kind of silence that forces you to think about how loud your fork is against the plate.

My bowl of congee sits half-finished, lukewarm, a skin forming across the top. My fork taps against the rim.

Tap-tap. Tap. Tap-tap.

Three taps, a pause, two taps. I’ve been doing it for seven fucking minutes.

My father doesn’t look up from his newspaper. His chopsticks move with the same mechanical rhythm that has governed every morning of my life—pinch, lift, chew, rest. The business section of the Chosun Ilbo is spread across the wood, but his eyes haven't left the same paragraph for two full minutes.

My mother focuses on my bowl. Not on me. Her chopsticks hover above a small dish of pickled radish, holding that particular pause that means she’s about to deliver a speech she’s already rehearsed.

“You know we only want what’s best,” she says softly.

“I know,” I say.