Page 172 of Vow to Claim You

Eero is out of the chair before the nod is complete. He runs past me, through the door, down the corridor, the same way I drove down that road.

Then I walk to the bedroom.

Ayanna is sitting on the edge of the bed. She’s changed into something soft—a sweater that falls past her wrists, her hair loose—and she looks up when I enter with eyes that are exhausted and alert in equal measure.

“What you said to my father on the road…”

I walk closer and set the files I grabbed from my office on the bed beside her.

“This will explain it,” I almost whisper. “I’m done keeping things from you, Ayanna. I thought I was protecting you. All I was doing was building the wall higher. Whatever this costs, I would rather bleed with you than keep you comfortable behind a lie. So. Here is everything.”

I open the file, and I lay it out for her the way I laid it out for the table at Olympus, but slower, and gentler. The money that paid the shooters, laundered through three shell companies before it ever touched them. The man on my own detail who’d been bought and set inside our walls before the first shot was ever contracted—weeks before, which means someone was planning to put a bullet in me long before that gala was ever announced. The chain of intermediaries that dead-ends, every single time, back into the same nest of holdings I flagged and told no one about. Holdings that trace, through enough cut-outs to give a man a headache and just short of enough to convict, to Monsera. To her father.

“I haven’t shown you any of this before because I didn’t want to destroy you more than you already were. Not before I was absolutely certain. Everything in those files points in one direction. Your father.”

I see the way her breathing changes, the minute contraction of her pupils, the way her hands go very still in her lap, but her face stays composed.

“Points at him,” she repeats slowly. “But doesn’t confirm.”

“No.” I owe her the precision. “Points. Strongly. The money trails lead back to Monserian accounts with ties to his network. The cut-outs are structured the way his operations have always been structured. I’ve studied them long enough to recognize the signature. The timing of every move against us aligns with moments where he had access, information, opportunity.” I exhale. “But there’s no single piece of evidence that would convict him. Nothing that closes the door completely.”

“Then it could be someone else.” Her voice is thin as though she’s clinging to the last impossible hope that her father isn’t beyond saving.

“It could,” I admit. “And I’ve been holding that door open for weeks, Ayanna. Longer than I should have. Because I wanted it to be someone else.” My jaw tightens. “For your sake. More than you know.”

She stares at the files for a long moment, then her expression changes as though something just came to her mind. Her brows twitch and eyes wander somewhere distant.

“What is it?” I ask.

Her gaze lifts to mine, flickering with something that looks like the moment a puzzle piece clicks into place and you wish it hadn’t.

“Naomi told me something.” Her voice is quiet now. “A couple of weeks ago. She overheard our father.” Ayanna swallows, absently tucking a strand of her behind her ear. “The night before Luca’s funeral. He said the problem had been handled. That he wouldn’t be making any more threats.”

The door I’ve been holding open for weeks just narrowed to a crack.

I look at Ayanna. She looks back at me with the kind of expression that says the last illusion she might’ve had just burned. And I see that she knows—has known, maybe, longer than she’s been willing to admit—what her father is capable of. What he’s always been capable of.

“I have an idea,” I tell her slowly, “how to know for certain.”

Her eyes sharpen. “How?”

“It’s dangerous. And we only have one shot. If it fails, we’re burned.”

Ayanna’s posture straightens. And in her eyes, beneath the grief and the exhaustion and the residual ache of everything this year has taken from her, I see the thing that made me want her from the first day—that core of iron that refuses, under any circumstance, to bend.

“Tell me,” she says.

CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE

Aric

We arrive at Palermo the following morning. Ayanna and Eero wait in a hotel while I head for the meeting with Nikos. He agreed to see me on short notice, which I appreciate. I know he’s taking this as seriously as I do.

The meeting room is on the second floor—smaller than the Council chamber, but with the same mythic structure. Stone walls with carvings of Greek gods. A single marble table and two chairs.

Nikos is already seated when I enter, a cup of espresso at his elbow. He’s dressed in black suit as always and his eyes track me from the doorway to the chair across from him.

“You have my attention,” Nikos says.