Chapter 7
The First Lie
The dinner ended with everyone pretending they had not just watched Dante announce a future he had not yet earned.
That was the part Mia hated most: how good the family was at pretending.
Back in the penthouse, she did not wait for him to remove his coat. She turned on him the second the door shut.
"You knew my mother's name before tonight."
Dante stopped halfway to the bar. "Yes."
"How?"
"Because it was in one of my father's old witness files."
Mia stared at him. "Witness files for what?"
He took a glass from the shelf, filled it with water, and did not drink. "For people my family couldn't keep safe in the open."
"That doesn't answer the question."
"It answers the part you can use."
Her temper flashed hot enough to make her step forward. "Stop doing that. Stop deciding which truths I can handle."
Something in his face shifted.
"You think I'm protecting myself," he said. "I'm protecting the information that gets people killed."
"I'm already in it."
"I know."
The answer was immediate and rough around the edges, and it made the room feel smaller.
Mia crossed her arms. "Then say the thing you're not saying."
Dante set the glass down. "I knew your mother's name because I saw it in a file the night she vanished. I did not know why it was there. I still don't know the whole story."
"You expect me to believe that?"
"I expect you to believe that I am not the only person in my family who lies for a living."
She should have stayed angry. Instead the fatigue under the anger cracked open and let something else through. He looked tired in a way she had not seen before. Not physically. Worse. A man tired of his own choices.
"Why didn't you tell me sooner?" she asked, more quietly now.
He held her gaze. "Because every time I tell you something useful, someone else in the house learns how much you know."
The answer landed. She hated that it did.
He moved a step closer. Not enough to crowd her. Enough that the air changed.
"Mia."
The way he said her name now was different. Not possession. Not warning. Something that sounded too much like restraint.
"What?"
His eyes dropped to her mouth for half a second and returned to her face. "If you keep looking at me like that, we are going to stop having a conversation."
Her heartbeat kicked hard enough to be embarrassing.
"Maybe I'm tired of conversations."
Dante's expression went very still.
The room tightened around the space between them. Mia could hear the refrigerator hum, the distant traffic, her own breathing trying and failing to stay even.
He lifted a hand, stopped before touching her, and let it hover just beside her jaw.
She did not move away.
He did not move closer.
Then the first gunshot cracked through the glass.
The window to the west of the penthouse exploded inward in a glittering sheet of sound and light.
Dante hit the floor and dragged Mia with him so fast the world became elbows, breath, and the violent hiss of cooling air.
Somewhere below, alarms began to scream.