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He shrugged.

“She’s leaving out context.”

“And even after I tried to stab him through the heart, he still married me,” Scarlett said, smiling sweetly as she held up her hand to show Isabella her wedding ring.

Isabella glanced around at all of them for a beat.

Then she started laughing—not a soft little laugh, but a real one, open and delighted.

I sat back and let the women take over.

They talked around me as the convoy moved through Jersey—Aria, Xyst, life in Manhattan, husbands who considered surveillance a love language, and the particular insanity of becoming involved with The Syndicate.

Then Manhattan appeared across the Hudson.

Isabella went silent.

She turned toward the window, practically pressing her face to the glass. Across the gray-blue river, the skyline rose into the winter sky, towers disappearing into low clouds while thousands of windows caught the last of the daylight.

Her hand found mine without her looking.

“Oh my God,” she whispered. “That’s Manhattan?”

“Aye.”

She stared for a few more seconds. “It’s enormous.”

I smiled. “You haven’t seen half of it yet.”

Her eyes widened. “There are so many buildings.”

Her attention moved across the skyline, trying to take everything in at once.

“People actually live in all those buildings?”

“Some of them.”

“And you live in one?”

“Yes. I think you’re going to like it.”

She finally glanced at me, wonder written all over her face, then immediately turned back to the window as though Manhattan might disappear if she looked away too long.

The road curved, and concrete walls began closing around us.

Then she frowned.

“Where are we going?”

“The Lincoln Tunnel,” Lacey said.

Isabella looked toward the river.

Then toward the tunnel entrance.

Then back at me.

“No.”