Page 12 of The Rook’s Obsession

He goes silent. It’s the kind of silence that spreads through a space and fills it up until the air feels heavy. I hear the traffic outside, faint. Somewhere, a siren wails. Someone crosses the floor overhead.

“Nice story,” I finally decide.

He doesn’t move. He stares at me, waiting for more.

So I give it to him. “The Russos took me in. They took care of me. They protected me; they trained me. They gave me a purpose. Why in the hell would they lie about who I am? What would be the point?”

“You’re a smart girl.” The worst part? He says it without a single drop of condescension. “What do you think?”

I don’t answer him because I don’t have an answer, and that’s the problem. The question isn’t why would they lie. The question is why wouldn’t they. I know Vincenzo. I know how he operates. Everything is leverage. Everything is a transaction. People aren’t people to him. They’re assets. Tools. Things to be used and discarded once they’ve outlived their usefulness.

I’ve always known that. I just never applied it to myself.

Nick doesn’t push. He doesn’t say another word, in fact. He only moves to the other side of the bed, as far from me as possible without falling off the mattress, and lies down on top of the covers, fully clothed, with his hands folded on his chest. In no time, his breathing slows and evens out like someone who’s trained himself to fall asleep quickly… or someone too exhausted to stay awake another minute.

I watch him for a while. His face, relaxed in sleep, losing its tight control. He looks younger this way. Less guarded. I didn’t notice the dark circles under his eyes before, and now they make me wonder how much sleep he’s gotten in the last four months, if his story about searching for me is true.

I could smother him right now with a pillow. The thought arrives cold, clinical, the way all of my operational thinking does. My right hand is free. The pillow is wedged between me and the headboard. I would only have to press it over his face, hold it down, and wait for him to stop moving. It would take a few minutes, maybe less if I use my body weight to pin him.

Except, he would wake up. He’d be awake the second I moved, because he sleeps the way I sleep, with one eye open and every nerve tuned to the slightest shift in the room. People like us don’t sleep deeply. We can’t afford to. I could try, but he would catch my wrist before the pillow touched his face, and then we’d be right back where we were before I wound up cuffed again. With him on top of me, pinning me down, and those pale blue eyes looking down at me with something that isn’t anger.

So that’s out.

I need a different approach. Brute force isn’t working. I’ve shot him, I’ve sprayed him, I’ve kicked his wounded leg. He’s still here, still breathing. Still looking at me like I’m the only thing in the world that matters. Violence doesn’t work on him. Not when it comes to me. He absorbs it the way the ground absorbs rain. It hits him, soaks in, and he keeps going.

That means I need to use the one weapon he can’t defend against.

Himself.

He has feelings for me. Real ones, deep ones. They’re the kind of feelings that make a man fly across the ocean and spend four months chasing someone he hasn’t seen in twelve years. The kind of feelings that let you take a bullet in the leg and stay in the city instead of running away.

Those feelings are his liability. And if there’s one thing Vincenzo taught me, one thing I know is true regardless of whatever else might be a lie, it’s that liabilities exist to be exploited. You find the sore spot, then you press on it until something breaks.

Nick’s sore spot is me. Whatever I was to him before, whatever he still thinks I am, that’s his weakness. If I stop fighting and start adapting, I can use it. I can earn a measure of trust and create an opening.

Then, when my chance comes, I’ll take it.

It’s manipulative. It’s cold. And it’s exactly what I’ve been trained to do. I’ve done it dozens of times. It never fails.

So why does the thought of doing it to him make something twist in my stomach?

I push the feeling aside, because feelings are liabilities, too. Whatever strange, unasked-for reactions my body keeps having around this man, they aren’t real. They’re the echoes of a life someone else lived. They belong to a girl named Laura, who died on a boat twelve years ago.

I am not her, if I ever was. I’m Ivy. And Ivy never lets feelings get in the way. I can’t afford to feel.

When I close my eyes, I let the exhaustion take me. It pulls me into a sleep that’s shallow and fitful, the way it always is. My cuffed wrist aches. The bed smells like him.

Before I go under completely, one last thought drifts through my mind. Nick’s question, the one I couldn’t answer and still can’t.

Why do you think?

I’m not sure I want to know the answer.

NICK

She slept maybe four hours. I know because I slept around three.

The rest of the time, I laid on my side of the bed with my eyes closed and listened to her breathe, paying attention to every shift and sound she made. She’s a restless sleeper, twitches a lot. Twice, she made a sound in her throat—not quite a word, not quite a cry. It made me want to pull her against me the way I used to.