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“What is it?”

His gaze dropped briefly to the bag at my feet. “Something Salvatore gave me before he died.”

The room seemed to tilt, though nothing moved.

“You have something from Salvatore?”

“Yes.” Rurik’s voice gentled, but he didn’t come closer. “I should have given it to you sooner.”

Every question I possessed tried to escape at once. I couldn’t choose between demanding what Salvatore had left and asking why Rurik had kept it from me. Grief moved faster than anger, pulling me into the hallway before thought could follow.

Rurik turned toward the adjoining dining room. “It’s on the table.”

I followed him, already afraid of what my husband had left behind.

Rurik waited, both hands braced against a wooden table. A file lay beneath his gaze.

He looked up as I entered. For the first time since he had taken me from Boston, uncertainty moved across his face. He straightened slowly, then pushed the file toward the empty chair opposite him.

My anger faltered before I touched it. The folder was old, its corners softened by years of handling. Across the front, a single line had been written in black ink. I knew the slope of those letters and the small hesitation in the stroke where the pen had paused before continuing.

It was Salvatore’s handwriting. My fingertips hovered above it. For four years I had been desperate for anything his hands had touched, but those familiar letters filled me with immediate dread. Salvatore’s handwriting belonged on grocery lists, birthday cards, and notes left on my pillow. It belonged to ordinary love—not to a safe house, a locked room, and the man who had dragged me out of Boston.

“Where did you get this?”

“Salvatore gave it to me,” Rurik said. “He left specific instructions. I was not to approach you unless the threat resurfaced or I confirmed the people behind it had found you.”

I stared at him across the table. “When?”

“Before he died.”

The room tightened around the answer. “You’ve had this for four years?”

“Yes.”

“You knew something about my husband’s death for four years and said nothing?” My voice rose despite my effort to hold it steady. “You watched me live inside Nolan’s house. You knew I was grieving, and you kept this because a dead man told you to?”

“Because approaching you could have led them to Henry.” Rurik accepted my fury without raising his voice. “Salvatore believed silence was protecting both of you. Until I knew it wasn’t, I followed his instructions.”

I wanted to throw the file at him. I wanted to tear it open and tear it apart. Instead, I lowered myself into the chair because my legs no longer trusted the rest of me, and I pulled the folder close.

The first page changed the shape of my marriage, and the second changed the shape of my life.

I read without breathing properly, turning each sheet with hands that shook harder the further I went. Carefully preserved pieces of a history I had never known passed beneath my eyes. Salvatore’s handwriting appeared in the margins, sometimes controlled and sometimes driven so deeply into the paper that I could feel the impression beneath my fingertips.

He had known.

The realization cut backward through every memory I possessed, opening moments I had believed were safe and revealing the fear hidden inside them.

I woke one night in Montana and found Salvatore standing at the bedroom window. Moonlight outlined his shoulders while one hand held the curtain barely an inch from the glass.

“Is someone there?” I whispered.

He released the curtain and crossed the room immediately. “No, baby. Go back to sleep.”

“Did Nolan find us?”

“No one found us.” He climbed into bed and drew me against his chest, holding me until his heartbeat slowed beneath my cheek. “I’m right here.”