Page 17 of The Rook’s Obsession

Before I can respond, something buzzes on the desk. My phone. I left it in my jacket pocket last night, and he must have set it aside with the rest of my things. The screen lights up with a notification. A text from an unknown number.

My handler.

I look at Nick. He looks at the phone. Neither of us moves for a long moment.

“That’s work,” I offer.

“I know what it is.”

“I have a job. A new one, apparently.” I don’t reach for the phone, but I nod toward it. “I can’t just leave. I work for the Russos. I owe them my life.”

Something dark moves through his expression. Not anger. It’s something colder. “You don’t owe them a goddamn thing.”

“They raised me. They trained me. They gave me⁠—”

“A purpose. Yeah, you keep saying that, too.” He leans forward, forearms on his knees. “What kind of purpose, exactly? Killing people for money? Being sent to seduce targets? Is that the life you’re grateful for?”

The words land hard. Much harder than I want him to know. I keep my face neutral, because that’s what I do, but something aches in my gut. An uncomfortable pressure, like a door being forced open. “It’s the only life I know.”

“It doesn’t have to be.”

“You don’t get to decide that for me.” I hold his gaze, and my voice comes out steadier than I feel. “You don’t understand how this works. You don’t just walk away from the Russos. That’s not how it’s done. People who try to leave end up dead. People who help them leave end up worse.” Not that it matters either way. I’m not trying to spare his life. Even if he’s spared mine.

He’s quiet for a beat, studying me. Then he says, “How do you think I knew you were alive?”

I blink. “What?”

“How do you think I found out you were still alive in the first place? That you were out here, working for them?”

I don’t answer, because I don’t know. I assumed Liam, if he exists, had sources. Connections. People in the right places asking the right questions. That’s how intelligence works.

“Gabriel told me,” Nick says. “Gabriel Russo. He’s the one who confirmed you were alive and pointed me in this direction. He knew I was coming to look for you.”

I process that. Gabriel. Not Vincenzo. Gabriel, with the easy smile and the charm that makes you forget he’s every bit as dangerous as his father. Gabriel, who runs operations in the States because his father can’t show his face there.

“That doesn’t mean anything,” I insist, but my voice has lost some of its edge. “Gabriel does what Gabriel does. It’s Vincenzo who holds the strings. Vincenzo is the one who decides who stays and who goes, and he won’t let me go. Not willingly.”

“Let me worry about Vincenzo.”

A sound escapes me that’s almost a laugh. Almost. “You have no idea what you’re up against.”

“I have a pretty good idea, actually.”

“No. You don’t.” I lean back in my chair and fold my arms. The floral blouse bunches at my elbows, and I resist the urge to rip it off and demand my own clothes back. “Vincenzo Russo is not someone you negotiate with. You don’t threaten or outmaneuver him. He’s someone who makes problems disappear. When he finds out I’ve been taken—and he will find out—he won’t send a polite email asking for my return.”

Nick holds my gaze, unbothered in a way that’s either incredibly brave or catastrophically stupid. Maybe even insane. “I said, let me worry about it.”

“Fine.” I pick up my coffee and take a sip, settling back in my chair again. “Worry about it all you want. I’m sure Vincenzo will be very accommodating when he comes to collect me.”

I say it lightly, casually, like it’s a joke. But it isn’t. Vincenzo will come. Or he’ll send someone. And whoever Nick Brooks is, whatever training he has, whatever promises he made to a brother I don’t remember—none of it will matter when the Russos decide to take back what’s theirs.

He’ll learn. They all do.

I just hope I’m not the one who has to watch.

The thought catches me off guard. The implication that I would care if something happened to him. I shove it down, hard, and focus on my coffee. It gives me something to do with my hands that isn’t reaching across the table and doing something I’d regret.

Like touching him. Like letting him touch me again.