Chapter 95 THE TRUTH ABOUT BEFORE

Chapter 95 THE TRUTH ABOUT BEFORE
Dominic's POV

I sat at the table after she left and didn't move for a while.

Elias and Adrian were still talking strategy and my mother-in-law was in the kitchen and Maya had disappeared somewhere and I sat there and let the weight of what had just happened settle properly.

I had known this conversation was coming. I had been putting it somewhere manageable for months and now it had arrived and I had done exactly what I always did, told the truth and watched it cost me something I couldn't afford to lose.

Adrian looked at me from across the table and said, "give her tonight."

"I know," I said.

"She'll come back," he said.

"I know that too," I said, and stood up and went to the window because sitting felt wrong.

The city was doing what it always did outside, indifferent and loud, and I stood there and thought about Elena Scott in a hospital bed for fifteen years and the suppression I had known about and the connection I had made too late or too slowly or with too much self-interest in the delay, and I couldn't find a version of it that absolved me no matter how many times I turned it over.

Adrian's phone buzzed and he looked at it and said, "I need to go down to the lobby, Zara has something," and I said go and he went and the suite got quieter.

Elias came and stood next to me and didn't say anything for a moment and then said, "she'll forgive you."

"Maybe," I said.

"She stepped toward you in a warehouse when you were transforming," Elias said. "She has a high threshold."

That landed somewhere and I held onto it and said nothing.

\---

Adrian's POV

Zara was at the lobby café again, same corner table, same coffee, and she had her notebook open and when she looked up and saw me she closed it which meant whatever she wanted to say wasn't in the notes.

I sat down and she looked at me for a moment and then said, "are you okay."

"Why," I said.

"Because you just sent me a message that said coming down now and nothing else and your face right now looks like someone told you something you didn't want to hear," she said.

"It's not my situation to share," I said.

"Fair," she said, and pushed a coffee toward me that she'd already ordered for me and I looked at it and then at her.

"How did you know I'd want coffee," I said.

"You always want coffee," she said simply.

I sat back and drank it and she opened her notebook again and said she'd found two more names connected to Kade's operational structure, people who hadn't appeared in the files before, and she went through them and I listened and wrote down what I needed and the conversation was professional and straightforward and I was fine until she leaned across the table to point at something in the notebook and her arm brushed mine and stayed there.

She kept talking about the names and I kept listening and her arm was against mine and neither of us moved and I was aware of every centimetre of it.

She finished what she was saying and looked up and we were closer than I'd registered and she had a small ink mark on her jaw from her pen and I reached over without thinking and rubbed it away with my thumb and her breath caught and she went very still.

My thumb stayed on her jaw for a second longer than it needed to and she looked at me and her eyes were very direct the way they always were and I said nothing and she said nothing and the lobby was full of people and none of them existed.

Then she reached up and straightened my collar with both hands, slow and deliberate, and her fingers stayed at my throat and I covered her hand with mine and we sat like that, both of us completely still, both of us knowing exactly what this was and neither of us saying it.

"Adrian," she said quietly.

"I know," I said.

"This is complicated," she said.

"I know that too," I said, and I did know and I also didn't move my hand and neither did she.

She looked at my mouth and I looked at hers and the lobby carried on around us and it was the closest I had been to something real and unstrategic in longer than I could accurately remember.

My phone rang.

We both pulled back and I looked at the screen and it was Kade's number and the specific specific cold that came with that name settled over everything and I answered.

"Mr. Vale," Kade said, his voice the same measured calm it always was. "I know about Zara. I know what she's been giving you. Real information, which means she's no longer useful to me." He paused. "Which means you have approximately one hour before my people reach her."

I looked at Zara across the table and she read my face immediately and her own face changed.

"We need to move," I said, standing, "right now."

She grabbed her notebook and bag and stood and said, "how bad."

"Bad enough," I said, and we walked fast toward the elevator and I texted Dominic one line as we moved.

Zara is compromised. Moving her now.

\---

We got her to Nadia's hotel three blocks away because it was the only location Kade's people didn't have on file yet and Nadia opened the door and looked at us both and said nothing, just stepped back and let us in.

I checked the corridor twice and locked the door and turned around and Zara was sitting on the edge of the bed with her notebook in her lap and her hands very still and she was holding herself together but I could see it costing her.

"You're okay," I said.

"I know," she said. "I'm not scared, I'm angry. I've been working on this for eight months and now I have to hide in a hotel room in midtown because—" she stopped and pressed her lips together.

"Because you got too close to the truth," I said.

"Yes," she said, and looked up at me and some of the anger softened slightly.

I sat in the chair across from her and we looked at each other and the room was quiet and the adrenaline from the lobby and the walk over was still in both of us and I was acutely aware that we were in a small room with one bed and a locked door and the thing from the lobby was still sitting between us unaddressed.

She put the notebook on the nightstand and pulled her knees up on the bed and said, "can I ask you something."

"You can ask," I said.

"The collar," she said. "In the lobby. That wasn't professional."

"No," I said.

"Was it real," she said.

I looked at her for a long moment and said, "yes."

She held my gaze and then nodded once and looked at her hands and I sat there and thought about the one hour Kade had given us and Nadia in the next room and Ava in Maya's room and Dominic at the window and thought that my life had become very full in a very short time.

Zara looked up and said quietly, "I'm not going to pretend the lobby didn't happen."

"Good," I said, "neither am I."

She almost smiled and then her phone buzzed and she looked at it and said, "Nadia just texted me. She says she needs to talk to Ava tonight and she's going up.”