"Hello, Ava Reyes."

Her fingers curled involuntarily around the USB drive.

Nobody had used that name in four months

Not once. Not even in her practice.

She didn't turn around. The laptop screen glowed blue across her fingers, and the grey bar at the bottom was at ninety-seven per cent. Three more seconds. Breathe.

"You have the wrong person," she said, her voice coming out smaller than she intended. "My name is Ava Moore. I'm your new assistant. I was only..."

"Copying my files." The man's voice was impossibly calm. Unsettling. "At midnight. In the dark."

The bar filled up, and a pleasant chime sounded throughout the office, louder than if a gun had gone off.

Ava wrenched the drive from her hand and crushed it in her palm

"Keep it," Alessio Vitale said.

Ava turned around.

He was standing two paces back, his hands in the pockets of his slacks, tie loose, sleeves rolled up to his elbows, blue light from the laptop casting his sharp profile in jagged shadows

He was not angry.

That was worse.

"I don't know what you mean," Ava said.

"The florist you worked for closed two years before your employment," Alessio said, tilting his head. "Your reference was a laundromat."

Heat prickled at Ava's cheekbones. Four months of lying to her mother, practising her cover story in front of the mirror, in the shower, on the bus. It was not worth it. None of it was worth it.

Ava turned and ran

Three paces. Four. Her fingers found the door handle and wrenched it open.

Nothing.

"It locks from the outside," Alessio said, "I locked it when I entered."

"Let me out."

"No."

"People know where I am!"

"Nobody knows where you are," Alessio said, and it was not an accusation, but something far, far worse. "That's why you chose tonight."

Ava's phone buzzed in her pocket, once, twice, Uncle Ray sending her nightly texts to make sure she was safe, and she dared not answer

Alessio's eyes dropped to her pocket and then back up. "Answer it, if you'd like," he said.

Ava stared at the window, forty stories of black glass, then at the desk and the thick, dark glass paperweight on its corner.

Alessio followed her gaze.

"Go on," he said.

Ava seized it and flung it at his head. It missed by a hair and burst against the wall, but he did not flinch.

Ava closed in on him, the drive between her knuckles like a dagger, but his hand closed around her wrist before she could get to striking distance. It was not a firm hold, not a painful one, but it was there, and she struggled against it anyway

They stood like that, breathing heavily, until his thumb hovered over the delicate skin of her inner wrist.

"You're shaking," he said.

"Let go of me."

"Your pulse is quickening."Because I hate you!"I know." His voice didn't change. "That's why I'm not afraid of you."

"Your family killed my father."

The words came out like a dagger, and for a heartbeat, something like regret flickered across his face before he smoothed it away.

"Say that again."

"You heard me."

Alessio released her

Ava stumbled backwards, pressing her aching wrist against the door, savouring the first time since he had said her name; she let herself examine his expression.

It was not anger she saw, but something close to it. Something like fear, even.

"What do you want?" she rasped. "Security? Police? Do it, then!"

"If I wanted security, they would already be here."

Alessio passed her, not to, but past, and perched himself on the edge of the desk, laptop in hand, turned it so that she could see the screen

"You didn't get to the last folder," he said.

Ava did not want to look, but her eyes were drawn to the screen anyway

Contracts. Transfers. Shipping. And at the very bottom, another name.

MARCUS REYES.

The air left her lungs in a rush.

"Where did you get that?"

"Look at the date," he said.

Last Modified: 31 Days Ago.

"No,s ", she whispered "That's not right. He's been dead for three years."

Alessio said nothing, only watched her, and for the first time since he had said her name, she saw something in his eyes like fear.

"Who opened it?" she demanded, slamming both palms against the desk. "Who looked at my father's file?"

"Someone who should not have," Alessio said.

"Who?"

"Ava." His voice was low, measured, as if the name might do something to him. It was the first time he had said it without that curl of ice behind it. "Once I tell you, there's no going back to who you were five minutes ago."I don't care."You will."

"Tell me!"

He studied her for a long moment. Her father, standing in this same doorway, gently wiped the smudges of mascara from her cheeks. Keep your head up, mij. Three years of Sundays, of visiting an urn in an empty mausoleum that did not belong to her.

"He's been dead three years," she said, and this time it was a question.

Alessio opened his mouth to say something, but down the hallway, the elevator chimed.

They both froze.

Footsteps. A number of them, growing louder.

Alessio's expression changed, and whatever cold calculation had been in his eyes was gone, replaced with something far sharper.

"Move," he said.

"Who is that?"

"Move, Av.,"

He took her hand, and she tried to pull away, but he held on. "They're not here for me."

It struck her like a physical blow when he said it.

"Who?"

"You,"

He pulled her across the room. Against the far wall, she spotted a very fine seam in the panelling, something she would have missed entirely if not for the way he pressed his palm against it, and a panel opened onto a narrow space no bigger than a wardrobe.

"Get in,"

"No.

"They'll kill you,"

The footsteps grew louder, filling the narrow hallway, and then a key scraped against the lock on the other side of the door.

narrowed, stepped inside, and he followed, and he held the door closed behind them.

It was tight, tighter than it had any right to be, and their shoulders touched from blade to hip, her back against the cold wall, his chest against her, and she felt his heartbeat against her ribs, quick and shallow, and she did not expect to feel anything like that in a man so composed.

"Don't breathe," he whispered, his mouth close to her ear, his breath hot against her skin.

Her body tensed. Tell yourself it's fear, she ordered herself.

His hand drifted up, settling over hers against the wall, not to hold her, but to still her, and his fingers were long and warm, and she hated that it made her shiver.

A door creaked open. She tensed. He did not. The light from inside the office spilt across the floor, a narrow strip of gold along the seam of the panel, and then boots echoed on the carpet, slowing, searching.

"The laptop's still warm," one man said,

"She was here."

"Check the bathroom. Check the stairs"

Alessio did not move. Neither did she. His thumb brushed lightly over her knuckles, slow and deliberate, as if he had not realised he was doing it, and she sucked in a breath, feeling him do the same. Fight it. Fight it, fight it.

Run. Bite. Scream.

Instead, she stood in the dark with the man she had come to kill, his hand over hers, and for one horrible heartbeat, she did not want it to end.

The boots stopped on the other side of the wall. A shadow crossed the threshold, and Ava's breath caught in her throat.

A cane tapped twice on the carpet, unhurried, unthreatening

"Leave us," a familiar, warm voice said,

The boots withdrew, the door clicked shut, and in silence that stretched on for an agonising span, the old man in the office began to sing.

Ava kept the tune. She had heard it all her life, in the kitchen, in the hallway, when her father thought nobody could hear.

Beside her ear, Alessio tensed.

"Come out, Alessio," Ludovico Vitale said gently. "I know she's with you. And I know exactly what she found..