<b>Chapter </b>285


    ISADORA’S POV


    I let out a small, careful sigh that felt more like a pry at my ribs than relief. Choosing to dy Mirian was like choosing between two small deaths- a stab of guilt for postponing him, and a tighter stab for risking everything if I let emotions steer me now. It pained me to make that decision, but it was a clean, necessary pain. If I told him no outright, who knew how he might react, he could be suspicious, annoyed, even back away and change his mind about seeing me at all. Better to keep him gently tethered with the promise of my arrival and let the exact timing remain my secret. Who knew, I might get Olivia’s son sooner than I expected and still make it to Adrian’s ce by midnight. The possibility steadied me.


    “Ok. I’ll see you soon,” I said, keeping my voice steady.


    Jose’s face registered the moment I answered. An expression flickered across it –


    surprise,


    “I’ll be waiting.” Adrian said, and then the line went dead.


    The silence after the call exploded in my skull. Jose swore under his breath. “What the hell?” he asked, his voice pitching higher than he intended.


    “Rx,” I murmured, smoothing the thinness from my tone as if words could iron out our nerves. “We’re going to get this done first before I go see him, okay?” I told him, and the question framed itself <i>as </i>both reassurance to him andw to myself.


    Hearing that, his face ckened into something calm. “Then we better hurry up with this,” he said, and we moved.


    —


    Outside, the evening air hit us like an aplice warm, smelling faintly of diesel and cut grass, the city’s pulse slowing toward night. Our ride was waiting, an unremarkable sedan with the driver hunched over his steering wheel, pretending to be distracted by his phone. Jose had been careful, he’d rented an apartment near Olivia’s mansion so we could strike quickly and vanish before anyone noticed the absence of a child or the disturbance that came with taking him. It was practical, clinical almost, and I appreciated the cold efficiency of it. Emotion had no ce when leverage needed to be taken.


    We reached the mansion in less time than felt right. The estate always seemedrger up close than images made it. My hands were steady. My eyes were steady. Inside, my heart kept a quiet, steady beat of warning and excitement braided together.


    I’d quit my job yesterday. The memory of walking into that useless manager’s office and letting him have every inch of my frustration still burned a little in my throat. Shouting felt like ripping off a bandage that had festered for too long a quick tear and then an end to pretending. I didn’t need that job anymore. I had spent months feeding myself small ambitions and lies so the manager’s smug face had been the perfect thing to unload on. It felt good, obscene and liberating to finally tell him what I thought.


    –


    Jose would take care of my financial needs, at least for a while. He had promised a small thank–you gift when he finally secured his position. I believed him. I needed to. The thought of being dependent gnawed at me, but not as fiercely as the idea of losing Adrian again. Still, power was being built today in a different currency: information, leverage, a little boy who represented ess and advantage. That was the kind of capital money couldn’t easily buy.


    7:03 <b>Fri</b><b>, </b><b>Sep </b><b>26 </b>


    F:


    The cab stopped directly in front of the gate. We stepped out, the gravel crunching under our shoes like tiny rms. Jose shot me one more nod that meant everything and nothing, a shorthand for the n’s pieces and the trust we were supposed to have in one another. He moved forward and pressed the doorbell with a casual, practiced motion. We didn’t look like intruders, we looked like someone’s evening guests who’d been allowed past the mundane rigmarole of security. That was the image we wanted.


    When the gateman came, his brow furrowed in recognition at the sight of Jose. He didn’t expect to see him here. For a heartbeat, there was the waver of a man recalcting his day whether this meeting was sanctioned, whether it was worth the trouble of disturbing the household. The man looked older, worn in with the kind of careful suspicion that people who stand watch develop.


    “Good day, sir,” the gateman said, a practiced politeness wrapped around the caution.


    “Good day. Open the gate. I want to talk to my family,” Jose said, setting a smile on his face that looked like a mask but read as sincere enough.


    “Sir, Mr. ke and his wife aren’t around at the moment. They stepped out, and it’s only Mrs. Olivia and her son in the house,” he said. In his head, Jose must’ve looked like someoneing to check on rtives a harmless story to justify an unexpected visit. The gate man probably assumed Jose was here to see Olivia’s parents, not realizing how perfectly that small assumption fit our n.


    Jose tilted his head toward me, smiling in a way that made it clear we were on the same page. The setup couldn’t be more perfect: just Olivia and her son at the mansion, a quiet interior, fewer eyes to pry. My pulse thudded faster. I met Jose’s smile with my own, and we both understood how fragile and exquisite this


    moment was.


    “I know they’re not around,” Jose said smoothly, leaning into a tone of mild annoyance. “They told me before I came, but it’s Olivia I want to talk to.”


    The gateman hesitated, a small fissure of doubt shadowing his features. He repeated the rules with mechanical caution. “Sir, the thing is Mrs. Olivia told me not to open the gate to visitors without the request from both her and Mr. ke,” he said, almost pleading to a rulebook that had kept him safe.


    Jose’s reply was a quiet weapon, heavy with implication. “And I’m sure you know I’m not a visitor. What I want to say to Olivia is important, and if she finds out you kept me here this long from telling her this, trust me, you would surely lose your job.” I watched the old man weigh the sentences, feel the tilt toward self- preservation. He did not want to be the excuse for a man’s dismissal.


    For a split second, the gateman’s eyes flicked between Jose’s steady gaze and our faces. He pressed the remote, the gate sliding open with the soft, inevitable sigh of systems obeying orders and fear. We walked through with big smiles on our faces, the smiles of people who believed entirely in the stories they told the world.


    “You handled that well,” I said quietly to Jose, a smallpliment that felt like a shared victory.


    When we reached the front door, I turned slightly, my voice lowering so no one else could hear. “You can stay here and make sure that gateman doesn’t get involved, will you be able to do that?” I asked him, every syble wrapped in urgency and trust.


    Jose caught my eyes, a half–smile pulling at his mouth, and answered in the sort of tone that belonged to men who still kept surprises in reserve. “Don’t underestimate me, I may be old but I still have a lot left in the tank, just hurry up and get the boy so we would be out of here before the security team gets here.”