Chapter 67 SOMETHING TO SHOW YOU

Chapter 67 SOMETHING TO SHOW YOU
NOVA'S POV

Matthias had chosen a restaurant on the forty second floor of a building I had never been inside before.

Floor to ceiling glass on every wall, the city spread out below us in every direction like something that had been arranged specifically for the view.

He was waiting at the table when I arrived, standing rather than sitting, his jacket perfectly fitted, his expression doing that warm open thing it did when he saw me that I had spent weeks learning to read correctly.

"You look wonderful." He pulled my chair out and waited until I sat before taking his own seat, his eyes moving over my face with that attention he always gave me.

"Thank you." I put my bag on my lap and looked out at the city below us. "I have never been up here before."

"I know." He smiled across the table. "I wanted to show you something worth seeing."

We ordered. He chose the wine the way he always did and asked about my day and I told him about the acquisition files.

He listened with his hands wrapped around his glass, his eyes on my face.

It was after the main course arrived that he reached into the inside pocket of his jacket and put a small envelope on the table between us.

"Open it," he said, watching me.

I looked at the envelope for a moment before I picked it up. My name was written across the front in handwriting I didn't recognize, neat and deliberate, the letters formed with the particular care of someone who had learned to write in another language first.

I opened it.

Inside was a single card. Thick paper, no letterhead, just a handwritten note in the same careful script.

Miss Sinclair. I believe it is time we met properly. I have reserved the private dining room at the Meridian Club this Saturday at eight. I hope you will join me. There is much I would like to tell you about your mother. — V.C.

I sat very still with the card in my hands.

Matthias was watching me across the table with an expression that was doing several things at once, the warmth still present but something else underneath it now, something that was waiting to see how I reacted before it decided what to do next.

"He asked me to deliver it personally," Matthias said, reaching for his wine glass. "He thought it would mean more coming from someone you trusted rather than through a message on your phone."

I looked at the card in my hands and then at Matthias across the table.

Someone you trusted.

He had said it without any change in his expression, without any flicker of awareness of what those three words cost him to say, what they revealed about the entire architecture of the last weeks.

Every dinner. Every careful question wrapped inside something that sounded like concern. Every warm look across a candlelit table.

All of it built toward this moment.

Delivering an envelope.

I set the card down on the table beside my plate and picked up my wine glass then took a slow sip and looked out at the city below us spread out in all that light and distance.

"Saturday," I said quietly, still looking at the view.

"He is looking forward to meeting you." Matthias set his glass down and leaned forward slightly, his voice dropping.

"Nova, I know this is a lot. I know how complicated your feelings about everything connected to your mother must be." He reached across the table and covered my hand with his.

"I just want you to know that going into this meeting with someone who understands how Castellano operates is better than going in alone."

I looked at his hand on mine.

Then I looked up at his face and I held his gaze and I smiled at him slowly, letting it reach my eyes, letting him see exactly what he needed to see in it.

"You would come with me?" I kept my voice soft.

Something shifted in his expression. Relief, moving through him so quickly he almost managed to hide it. "If you want me there, absolutely."

"Let me think about it." I turned my hand over under his briefly. "This is a lot to take in over dinner."

"Of course." He squeezed my hand once before releasing it. "Take all the time you need."

We finished dinner and he drove me back to the estate and kissed me at the gate and told me to call him whenever I was ready to talk it through.

I watched his car pull away and stood on the pavement in the dark until the tail lights disappeared around the corner.

Then I pulled out my phone and called Reeves.

He picked up on the third ring, his voice carrying the particular alertness of someone who had been expecting a call but not quite this soon.

"Castellano wants a meeting, not the one from the test message," I said, walking through the gate toward the house. "He said on Saturday night. The Meridian Club. A private dining room."

A silence on Reeves's end that had weight to it.

"He sent the invitation through Matthias," I said.

"He is moving faster than I expected." Reeves's voice was careful. "How did you respond?"

"I said I needed to think about it." I pushed the front door open and stepped into the quiet entrance hall. "I didn't say yes and I didn't say no."

"Good." The sound of him moving on his end, a chair, papers. "Miss Sinclair, I need you to listen to me carefully. Do not confirm that meeting without speaking to me first. Not to Matthias, not to Castellano directly, not to anyone."

"I know." I stood in the entrance hall in the dark with my bag on my shoulder and the house quiet around me. "Reeves. Is Saturday enough time for you?"

The silence that followed lasted long enough that I knew the answer before he gave it.

"I am going to need to make some calls tonight," he said. "I will have an answer for you by morning."

He hung up.

I stood in the dark entrance hall for a moment longer.

Then the kitchen light came on down the corridor and Elias appeared in the doorway in a plain t-shirt and bare feet, a mug in one hand, looking at me with sleep still at the edges of his eyes like he had been trying to rest and not quite managing it.

"How bad?" He looked at my face from across the corridor.

I held up the card.

He crossed the entrance hall and took it from my hand and read it standing right there in the corridor with the kitchen light behind him and when he looked up his expression had gone somewhere very still and very serious.

"Saturday," he said.

"Reeves is making calls tonight." I took the card back from him. "He will have an answer by morning."

Elias looked at me for a long moment, his mug held loosely at his side, his eyes reading my face in that way he had.

"Are you scared?" he asked.

I looked down at the card in my hand. Castellano's careful handwriting. At my name written by the hand of the man who had watched my mother die without stopping it.

"Yes," I said honestly, looking back up at Elias. "But I was going to do this regardless."

He nodded slowly, like that was exactly what he had expected me to say and exactly what he had been afraid of and had made his peace with at the same time.

"Come and have tea," he said simply, turning back toward the kitchen. "Callum will be down in a minute, he hasn't slept either."

I followed him into the kitchen light and pulled out a chair and sat down and put the card flat on the table in front of me.

Saturday was just four days away.

Four days.