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“With the warm reunion?” Zeno asked. “Barely started.”

“We need to get out of here.”

The humor left Zeno’s face at once. He looked toward the cars beyond the diner. Then back at Demitri.

“How bad is it?” he asked.

“It’s bad,” Demitri replied, without further explanation.

Zeno’s expression did not change, but the air seemed to lose a degree of warmth. He gave a small nod toward one of his men standing outside. The guard spoke into his radio immediately.

“Adriana.” Demitri’s tone was careful. “This is Zeno Orsini.”

Zeno inclined his head. “Signora.”

“Adriana is fine,” Dimitri snapped.

Zeno laughed. “God,” he said. “I almost missed you.”

Demitri didn’t answer.

Zeno turned and gestured toward the cars. “Come on, before I change my mind and shoot you for old times’ sake.”

I stared at him.

Zeno glanced back at me, amused. “A joke.”

12

DEMITRI

Zeno stopped beneath the diner’s awning, rain sliding from the shoulders of his coat, and looked me over.

“How disappointing,” he drawled.

His eyes travelled over my bloodied sweater, my bruised face and the torn skin across my palm.

“I always imagined that when you came back, you would do it with more theatre.”

“I’m not back,” I snapped.

His gaze hardened. “Yet here you are.”

Adriana stood half a step behind me, wrapped in her coat. She had stopped shivering, but only because fear had locked every muscle in her body.

Zeno looked past me. His attention settled on her face, then moved lower, cataloguing her wrinkled clothes and the exhaustion hollowing her eyes. She didn’t shrink from him, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t afraid. Zeno had always possessed the ability to make silence feel like an interrogation.

“Are you hurt?” he asked.

His eyes remained on Adriana.

She glanced at me before answering.

“No.”

Zeno watched our brief exchange with an interest I didn’t like. Then he turned toward the nearest car. His driver had already opened the rear door. Zeno stopped beside him.

“I’ll drive.”