I woke up on his side of the bed.
Not near his side. Fully, completely, face-pressed-into-his-pillow on his side, with my leg thrown over his thigh and my hand fisted in the front of his shirt like I'd been trying to climb inside him in my sleep.
His arm was around me. His hand rested flat against my lower back, warm through the thin cotton of my shirt, and his breathing was slow and even against the top of my head.
Okay. This is fine. People migrate in their sleep. It's a well-documented phenomenon. There are studies. Probably. I'll look them up later when I'm not using a mafia prince as a body pillow.
I tried to extract myself. Slowly. One limb at a time.
His arm tightened around my waist and pulled me back.
I froze.
His breathing didn't change. His eyes stayed closed. His face was relaxed in a way it never was when he was awake, jaw soft, lashes dark against his cheekbones.
He was asleep. He had to be asleep. Nobody's arm moved that fast in their sleep.
I tried again. Shifted backward. Got maybe three inches of distance before his hand slid up my spine, found the back of my neck, and settled there with the casual ownership of a man who was absolutely, definitely, one hundred percent faking it.
"You're awake," I whispered.
His mouth curved against my hair. He didn't open his eyes.
"You're awake and you're pretending to sleep and you're holding me hostage."
"You came to my side." His voice was rough with sleep, low and warm, and it vibrated through his chest into mine. "I'm just keeping you where you chose to be."
"I didn't choose anything. Gravity chose."
"The bed is flat."
He opened his eyes. The green was softer in the morning light and the way he was looking at me from two inches away with sleep still in his face and his hand on my neck made my stomach do something that I was going to blame on hunger.
"Good morning," he said.
"Good morning. Please release me."
He didn't release me. His thumb traced a slow circle at the base of my skull and his eyes dropped to my mouth and stayed there for three full seconds before he looked away, jaw tightening with that familiar restraint.
He let go and sat up. The sheets pooled around his waist and his t-shirt was rucked up on one side, showing a strip of skin above his hip, and I looked at the ceiling because I was a mature adult who did not stare at her husband's hip bones at seven in the morning.
I did not. I absolutely did not. Moving on.
***
I sat at the kitchen island. Nik leaned against the counter across from me with his arms folded and his coffee balanced on the edge. Cillian stood between us with his phone face-down on the marble.
"Viktor Seriova," Cillian said. "He runs the Seriova family out of the northeast corridor. Shipping, arms, narcotics when the margins are right. He's been expanding south for the last two years and your father's territory sits on three port routes he needs."
"My father doesn't have territory," I said. "He has debts and bad decisions."
"He has port access through the Rossi contracts. That's territory." Cillian's eyes met mine. "Viktor wanted you as collateral. Marry into the Rossi line, control the daughter, leverage the father. He made his offer six months before I made mine."
"Six months." I turned that over. "So, my father shopped me around for half a year before settling on the highest bidder?"
Cillian didn't flinch at the word. Nik did, barely, a shift in his jaw that he covered with a sip of coffee.
"Your father went with the offer that cleared his debts completely," Cillian said. "Viktor's terms would have left him owing. Mine didn't."
So, I was a clearance sale. Buy one Ava, get debt freedom free. Fantastic.
"Here's the part that matters." Nik set his coffee down. "Viktor didn't take the loss well. We've been tracking his movements since Cillian acquired the contract. He went quiet for months. Then, about six weeks ago, someone accessed Evie Ross's university records using admin credentials that traced back to a shell account."
"Six weeks," I said. "That's before Cillian showed up at the café."
"Three weeks before," Nik confirmed. "Viktor found you first. He just didn't grab you."
"Why not?" I asked. "If he found me, why not just take me?"
Cillian answered that one. "Because taking you while you were unattached gives him a kidnapping. Taking you while you're under my protection and making it look like you left willingly gives him leverage and deniability." His voice was clinical. "He needed you to run. He needed you to choose to leave me. That's why the texts, the restaurant, all of it was pressure from every angle until the only escape route left was the one he'd built."
I thought about the man in the restaurant hallway, his hand in my hair, my head hitting the wall. "The guy at the restaurant wasn't trying to take me."
"He was," Nik said. "But the primary objective was escalation. Make you feel unsafe with Cillian so that when a nice boy with a clean face offered you a way out, you'd take it without thinking twice."
Jason. They'd used Jason like a piece on a board. Found his feelings for me, fed him the right contact, wound him up and pointed him at me and waited.
"Does Jason know?" I asked. "That Sergei works for Viktor?"
"No." Nik shook his head. "Your friend thinks he found a freelance document guy through a friend of a friend. The chain was built carefully, three degrees of separation, all of them looking organic."
I pressed my palms into my eyes. Jason had been a tool and didn't even know it. The guilt sat heavy in my chest, right next to the anger.
"So, Viktor's been playing a long game," I said. "And Jason was his last move."
"His last move that we know of," Cillian corrected.
Cillian's phone vibrated on the counter. He glanced at the screen, typed something back, and looked at me with an expression I couldn't quite read.
"There's one more thing," he said.
Nik shifted his weight.
"The man from the restaurant," Cillian said. "Nik's people identified him last night. His name is Gregor Petrov. He's been on Viktor's payroll for three years."
"Okay," I said slowly. "And?"
"And the order he was operating under wasn't to hurt you." Cillian's voice had gone very quiet. "It was to retrieve you. Viktor wants you alive and functional, Ava. He has specific plans for the Rossi contract and every one of them requires you in one piece."
"He slammed my head into a wall," I said. "That's his version of keeping me in one piece?"
"Gregor went off script." Cillian's jaw flexed. "Viktor was not pleased. We know that because Gregor hasn't been seen since."
The only reason I was sitting here instead of in whatever room Viktor Seriova had prepared for me was the man standing across the counter. The one who'd washed blood out of my hair and kissed the corner of my mouth and held me in his sleep.
"We need to talk about what happens next," Nik said.
Cillian shook his head once. "Eat first." He looked at me with something careful behind his eyes.
"I'm not hungry."
"You haven't eaten since last night." He slid the plate of toast he'd made earlier across the counter toward me. It had butter and honey on it. He'd remembered from this morning that I'd picked the honey jar up and put it back twice before committing.
He noticed that? He noticed me hesitating over honey at seven a.m. while he was pretending to be asleep?
I ate the toast. He watched me eat it with the quiet satisfaction of a man who considered feeding his wife a strategic victory.
Nik's phone buzzed. He read the screen and his expression tightened.
"We've got a problem," he said.
"Which one?" I asked, because at this point they were stacking up like a collection nobody wanted.
Nik turned the phone toward Cillian. I watched him read it, watched his eyes go flat, the green turning hard and opaque.
"What?" I said.
Cillian set the phone down. He looked at me, and for a second, I saw him decide how much to tell me. I saw the old instinct, the one that wanted to fold me in walls and silence and keep the ugly things on his side of the door.
Then he told me anyway.
"Gregor Petrov is dead," he said. "Viktor sent what was left of him to one of my warehouses this morning with a note."
My stomach turned. "What did the note say?"
Cillian's eyes held mine.
"It said: The next delivery will be someone she loves."