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He reaches across, hits a few keys, then turns to the printer. A moment later, he hands me a tablet and a sheaf of documents. “Everything I've compiled. Every location, every name, every piece of intel gathered while you were inside.” He pauses. “The only other person who can give you more than what's on that tablet is right down that hallway.” He glances at the screen behind him. “Actually, according to what I'm seeing… she's been standing outside that door for the last five minutes.”

I tip my head, look at him, then take the tablet and papers.

I turn and open the door.

She's there, dark eyes, chin up, not an ounce of apology on her face.

“I wasn't eavesdropping,” she says.

I huff out a mirthless laugh. “Don't lie to me. You were fucking eavesdropping.”

“I just happened to be walking by.” The charm is gone, replaced by something considerably more interesting. “Who exactly are you to tell me what to do?”

Behind me, I hear Seamus make a sound that is definitely not a cough.

I look at her for a long moment. She's not afraid of me. “This is a conversation for somewhere private.”

I take a slow step toward her, then another, until there's very little distance left between us. She doesn't move. She puts her back against the wall rather than retreat, which tells me something important about her.

“Look at that heart race,” I say quietly, low enough that Seamus won't catch it. I press two fingers to the pulse point at her throat. She lets me. The beat against my fingertips is fast and furious, and I don't miss the look of hatred she gives me for noticing. “That's not fear, lass, now is it?”

“Ha! Don't flatter yourself.” But her eyes give her away.

“I'm not.” I hold her gaze. “If you're going to stand at doors, listening to conversations about yourself, you ought to hear all of it. Not just the parts that suit you.”

Her jaw tightens. She heard everything, then. The Esposito question. The choice. What I said about letting her make it.

“One condition. You don't go out alone.”

She waits for more. “That's it?”

“Aye.”

“You're not going to tell me you won't stop me? That it's my choice?”

“It is your choice.” I hold her eyes. “But you're not making it on your own, and you're not walking out that door without me behind you. That's the condition.”

Her eyes flash. Then, slowly, something in her face settles into a kind of grudging calculation, like she's decided this is a war she can fight later, on better ground.

“Fine.”

I step back. “Seamus will get you a copy of that intel.”

I walk away before I say something I’ll regret. Behind me, I hear her exhale, slow and controlled, the breath of someone steeling herself.

I know that sound. I make it myself.

”Come here.” The next day, it's time to get her on board with self-defense. I nod toward her. She stares at me.

“Now, Valentina.”

I brought her to the basement where we work out. Cavin dropped by for a spell this morning, came down and lifted with me, and as soon as he left, I brought her downstairs. She crosses the room curiously, arms folded, chin up. Good. The right instinct.

“Feet shoulder-width apart.” She adjusts. I edge her left foot wider with mine. She glances down but doesn't say anything. “Hands up. No, not like that. Like you're about to slap somebody, not like you're praying.”

She drops the prayer hands and raises them properly. “Better?”

“Barely.” I'm already circling her, and she tracks me with her eyes but doesn't turn her body. Smart girl. “The people who are after you aren't going to be nice.”