Page 18 of The Rook’s Obsession

The phone buzzes a second time on the desk. My handler, following up, probably wondering where the hell I am since I’m normally on top of things.

And I ignore it. I ignore a direct communication from the Russos, and the fact that it doesn’t feel as wrong as it should is the most unsettling thing that’s happened to me since I woke up in handcuffs.

Which is saying something, since all it takes is a casual glance toward the bathroom to make my blood hum.

Nick watches me not answer the phone. Something moves through his expression. It’s not quite a smile, but close. Like he sees something I’m not ready to admit.

I have to look away.

NICK

She hasn’t unclenched her jaw since we boarded. No, actually. Since we left the hotel.

I have to wonder what’s cooking in that head of hers. She didn’t put up a fight when we left. When she walked alongside me out of the hotel, then got into the car waiting for us at the curb. She never said a word and didn’t drag her feet. She didn’t even argue when I refused to let her have her weapons.

Is she planning to contact Gabriel once we’re home?

If I’m lucky, she won’t want to. She’ll start remembering who she is. I’m willing to let her plot and scheme if it gets her home.

The jet is small. It’s Liam’s, chartered through a shell company that doesn’t trace back to anything useful. Two pilots, one attendant, and enough leather and polished wood to make you forget you’re up in the clouds, hurtling through the sky. It’s the kind of luxury Liam takes for granted now, reminders of the empire he built out of grief and rage, and a thirst for vengeance.

I’ve texted him twice since takeoff. The first was brief. Got her on the jet. En route.

His response came in under ten seconds. How is she?

I looked across the cabin at the woman cuffed to nothing, sitting in a cream leather seat with her hands white-knuckled on the armrests and her face the color of old paper. Alive, I typed back. We’ll talk when I land.

That was twenty minutes ago. Since then, I’ve been pretending to read something on my phone while watching her out of the corner of my eye. She’s sitting across from me, angled toward the window with the shade pulled down, which tells me the view isn’t something she wants to deal with. The floral blouse she hated putting on this morning is wrinkled at the elbows where she’s been gripping herself. I guess she got tired of trying to crack the armrests.

Her breathing is controlled. Too controlled, the kind of deliberate rhythm you use when you’re trying to keep something from boiling over.

She’s terrified.

It took me a while to piece it together. At the hotel, when I told her about the flight, I read her resistance as stubbornness. Defiance. The same refusal to cooperate she’s thrown at me since the moment we met.

And that was part of it. She’s not the type to go anywhere willingly, especially with a man who drugged her and handcuffed her to a bed.

But this is something else. This is physical. I can see it in the tension of her neck, the rigid set of her spine. The way her breath catches every time the plane shifts even slightly. A trained assassin, who doesn’t flinch when she puts a bullet in a man, is sitting five feet from me, holding herself together with sheer willpower because she’s afraid of flying.

I don’t say anything. Not yet. I give her another few minutes, because if I’ve learned anything about this woman in the last few days, it’s that pushing her before she’s ready is the fastest way to get shut down. Or shot. Or both.

My phone buzzes. Liam again. When do you land?

Estimated seven hours from now. Midafternoon your time.

His reply almost overlaps mine. I want to see her.

I expected it. Of course he wants to see her. He’s waited twelve years. The second he found out his sister was alive, the only thing keeping him from getting on a plane himself was Aurora and the fact that I convinced him I could do this without him. Liam in Europe, searching for his brainwashed assassin sister while simultaneously running an empire and keeping his pregnant wife safe? Yeah, right. It was better for me to go alone.

He agreed, but it cost him. Every day I was out there, every dead end I reported, I could hear it in his voice. The frustration. The fear he wouldn’t admit to. The part of him that wondered if Gabriel had lied, if this was all some elaborate game, if his sister was really gone and this was just another way the universe was twisting the knife.

Now she’s real. She’s here. And she doesn’t know who the hell he is.

Give her time, I type. She doesn’t remember anything. She doesn’t believe she has a brother. Showing up at the airstrip is going to overwhelm her.

The three dots appear and disappear. Appear again. I can feel his frustration through the screen. Finally: Take her to the cabin. I’ll have it stocked while you’re en route and meet you there.

Understood, I reply.