Page 49 of Ruthless Scar
I open my mouth. Close it. Because he’s not wrong.
“Fine.” I save my work. Close the laptop. The screen goes dark and the room drops into silence. “But if I crack it in the middle of the night, you’re not allowed to complain about the noise.”
“I don’t sleep in the middle of the night.”
He’s already back to the file. Neither of us talks about why.
The compound breathes around me in the dark. I’ve been staring at this ceiling for hours, watching patterns form and dissolve in the shadows. The sheets are tangled at my feet. My brain won’t stop running the Benedetti encryption in the background like a process I can’t kill.
But that’s not what’s keeping me awake.
Sofia keeps swimming behind my eyelids. Not the data. Not the property transfers or the shell companies. Her face.
Be safe, Izzy. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.
That’s not a very high bar, Sof.
I know. That’s why I set it.
I throw off the covers. My feet hit the floor and I’m moving before the decision finishes forming. Kitchen. Water. A glass of cold to quiet the burn in my chest.
The hallway is dark. My feet know the route by now. Third floorboard creaks. The corner where moonlight cuts a line across the hardwood. Two weeks in this compound and my body has mapped the architecture without consulting my brain.
The kitchen is lit in silver. Moonlight pooling on tile, catching the edge of the stove, the curve of a tumbler on the drying rack. I fill a glass at the sink and drink half in one swallow.
Then footsteps.
I keep my back to the doorway. I know his walk. Deliberate. Every step placed like he’s marking exits even on the way to get water at midnight.
“Can’t sleep?”
“No.” I refill the glass. “You?”
“No.”
He moves into the kitchen. Neither of us reaches for the light switch. Darkness rewrites the rules. He leans against the counter across from me. Close enough to reach. Far enough to pretend we don’t want to.
“Tell me about her.”
I stop moving. Glass halfway to my mouth. “What?”
“Sofia.” Quiet. Like the name is careful in his mouth. “Tell me about her.”
Nobody asks me that.
“What do you want to know?”
“Anything.”
I set the glass down. My fingers have gone still on the glass, but not because of the data this time.
“She burns brownies.” It escapes me rough. Present tense. Because I can’t make her past tense. Won’t. “Every single time. She sets the timer and then she hears a song she wants to play, or she spots a video of a dog wearing boots, and she just. Disappears. Into the phone.”
“Then what?”
“Then the smoke alarm goes off. And she’s standing in the kitchen with chocolate on her chin, laughing. Like it’s the funniest thing that’s ever happened.” My mouth pulls into a shape that’s not quite a smile. “She never once made a batch that wasn’t black on the bottom.”
“Not once?”
