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The line disconnected.

I stared at the phone. I hadn’t said my name. I hadn’t spoken at all.

The woman had not said Salvatore’s name. She called him he with the confidence of someone who believed no other man could have placed us on opposite ends of that line. More devastating was her certainty that I would call. Not if. Salvatore had known the file would reach me, and he had known I would not leave the number untouched.

For four years, I had believed death ended every conversation between us. Now I realized Salvatore had arranged this one in advance.

Rurik took the device, removed the battery, and placed both pieces apart on the table. “It is a trap.”

“Maybe.”

“She identified you from a silent call to a number that has apparently remained active since Salvatore’s death. She selected the time and location, gave no proof, and prohibited protection. It is a trap.”

“Or Salvatore told her exactly how this would happen.” The possibility devastated me. He had imagined me surviving long enough to reach this page. He had prepared a stranger for the call he would never live to hear. “He told her that I would be the one calling after he was dead.”

Rurik rose and paced once to the window before turning back. “You will not walk into that restaurant alone.”

“She said to come alone.”

“You can enter alone. That is not the same as being unprotected.”

I looked at Reagan’s name, Nikita’s photograph, and the word Poseidon cut into the paper by the pressure of my husband’s hand. Every path forward had become another version of trust: trust Salvatore’s preparations, trust Rurik’s instincts, or trust fear enough to remain still.

Remaining still would answer nothing.

“Nine o’clock,” I said.

Rurik’s jaw tightened, but he gave one reluctant nod.

We were going to Chinatown.

CHAPTER TWENTY

Rain lacquered Chinatown until every street seemed polished to conceal blood. Red light fractured across the pavement, and people hurried past beneath umbrellas without looking long enough to remember my face.

The Red Duck stood halfway down the block, its gold lettering dark and its front dining room empty. A CLOSED sign hung in the glass, but the door opened under my hand.

Rurik had wanted to enter first. I refused because Reagan Jessop had asked for me, and I was finished allowing men to approach the truth before I did. He yielded after checking every possible entrance, but I knew he hadn’t gone far. Rurik obeyed distance the way other men obeyed laws: only while it served him.

The restaurant smelled faintly of roasted duck and disinfectant. Red lanterns glowed above tables stripped of place settings. A woman roughly my age sat alone in the center of the room, composed beneath the watch of five men standing along the back wall in military tactical gear.

I stopped inside the door.

The woman smiled. “You can tell Mr. Ryabkin to come in.”

Confusion moved through me before irritation replaced it. I glanced over my shoulder and nodded toward the darkness beyond the glass. Rurik appeared almost immediately, which meant he’d been close enough to hear. He entered with one hand near his weapon, locked the door behind him, and took his place at my back.

I crossed the dining room carefully and took the chair opposite Reagan. No one asked Rurik to sit, and he showed no interest in doing so. His presence settled behind my right shoulder, armed and silent, while Reagan lowered her gaze to the hands folded before her.

“Before we begin, I want to offer you my deepest condolences, Mrs. Valentinetti.” The humor left her voice. “Salvatore was my friend, and he talked about you often. He loved you very much.”

Shock moved through me too quietly for anyone else to see. For four years, I had survived among people who hadn’t known I was Salvatore’s wife. Hearing a stranger speak the name I had been denied opened a locked room inside me.

Salvatore had talked about me.

He had carried me into conversations I would never hear. The knowledge shouldn’t have mattered after marriage vows, a child, and six months beneath a Montana sky, but grief was greedy for proof that the dead had loved us.

“Thank you,” I whispered.