I expected the hotel. Instead, the car turned into a part of town I'd never been to, the kind of neighborhood where the buildings looked like they cost more than my entire education. The restaurant didn't have a sign. It had a black door and a man outside it who nodded at Cillian like they'd met before and looked at me like I was expected.
"I'm in jeans," I said, because someone had to state the obvious.
"You're fine."
"Easy for you to say. You changed into a suit to intimidate a college student."
His hand pressed against my lower back as he guided me through the door and I decided to stop arguing because the smell hit me. Garlic and butter and something rich with wine and I hadn't had a proper meal since the lukewarm hotel eggs this morning and my stomach made a sound that I hoped he didn't hear but absolutely did because his mouth twitched.
The inside was warm and dim, all dark wood and low lighting and candles on tables that were spaced far enough apart that you couldn't hear your neighbors. A woman in black greeted Cillian by name and led us to a corner booth in the back.
Cillian slid in beside me. His thigh pressed against mine in the booth and he picked up the menu like this was a completely normal seating arrangement and I was the strange one for noticing.
I noticed.
I noticed the warmth of him through the fabric of his trousers, and the way his shoulder was close enough that if I leaned two inches to the right, I'd be resting against him, and the way he smelled like that cologne I couldn't name mixed with something that was just him.
I opened the menu and stared at it very intently.
"The risotto is good here," he said.
"Great. Love risotto. Fascinating."
He glanced at me sideways and I could feel him deciding whether to be amused or concerned.
We'd barely ordered when a leather jacket slid into the booth across from us.
"Evening," Nik said, settling in like he'd been invited. He had not been invited. I could tell by the way Cillian's jaw did that thing. "Thought you two could use a chaperone. Newlyweds shouldn't be left unsupervised."
"Nik," Cillian said.
"Already ordered," Nik told him, flagging down a waiter with the ease of someone who ate here regularly. "The lamb, by the way. Don't let him talk you into the risotto, Mrs. Volkov. It's fine but the lamb will change your life."
I liked that he called me Mrs. Volkov like it was a joke we were all in on. I liked that he sat down without permission. I liked that Cillian looked like he wanted to throw him out and also like this was an old routine between them, one he'd given up fighting years ago.
"So," Nik said, leaning back with his glass of wine already in hand, looking at me with genuine curiosity. "What do you actually study? Because the file said accounting but I refuse to believe anyone chooses that willingly."
"I chose it willingly."
"Tragic. Beautiful woman, terrible life decisions. Explains the husband, I suppose."
I laughed. An actual laugh, the kind that surprised me because I'd forgotten what it felt like to just sit somewhere and be funny with someone who wasn't trying to own me or save me or file a welfare report about me.
Cillian watched me laugh. His expression was doing something it probably thought was neutral, but his eyes were softer than I'd seen them all day and there was a warmth in them that made my chest feel tight in a way I was going to have to deal with eventually. Just not tonight.
"She laughs," Nik said to Cillian. "See? It's possible. You should try it sometime. The facial muscles still work, I promise."
"Eat your food, Nik."
"It hasn't arrived yet. I'm filling the silence with charm. Someone has to."
The food came and it was incredible. Nik was right about the lamb. I told Cillian this and he looked at Nik with an expression that said he would be hearing about this for years.
Somewhere between the main course and Nik's second glass of wine, the conversation loosened. Nik told me about the time Cillian got lost in Prague because he refused to ask for directions and walked for six hours in the wrong direction before Nik found him sitting in a café pretending he'd meant to end up there all along.
"That's a lie," Cillian said.
"It's documented. I have photos."
"The photos prove nothing."
"The photos prove you ordered a full meal and a newspaper like a man who'd planned a day trip to the wrong side of the city."
I was laughing again and Cillian was looking at me again and this time when Nik leaned across the table and stole a piece of bread from my plate with a grin, I felt Cillian's hand settle on my thigh under the table.
His palm just rested there, warm through the denim, his thumb tracing a slow, deliberate line along the inside of my leg. He kept his eyes on Nik. His face gave away nothing. But his hand was saying something entirely different and every nerve ending in my body was listening.
I reached for my water glass and took a very long sip.
Nik looked between us and grinned like a man who had accomplished exactly what he'd set out to do.
"You know," Nik said, "when he found out about you, he didn't sleep for three days. Reorganized his entire operation. Moved people across two countries. I've known him since we were fourteen and I've never seen him like that. I told him he was being dramatic and he told me to book a flight."
"Nik," Cillian said. A warning.
"I'm just saying. She should know."
Cillian's hand was still on my thigh and I put mine over it. His fingers laced through mine under the table and held on. I looked at him and for a second, I saw past all of it. The suits and the control and the careful blankness he wore like armor. Underneath was someone who had crossed an ocean because a girl he'd never met ran away from him and he couldn't stand it.
Nik mercifully filled the silence with a story about the lamb preparation and I held Cillian's hand under the table and let myself have this one thing without analyzing it to death.
"Excuse me," I said eventually. "Bathroom."
The hallway to the restrooms was narrow and dimly lit, tucked behind the kitchen entrance. I pushed through the door, leaned against the sink, and looked at myself in the mirror.
My cheeks were flushed. My eyes were bright. I looked like a woman having a really good dinner with a man she was falling for.
"Get it together, Ava," I told my reflection. "He's your contractual husband. You are not catching feelings over hand-holding and lamb."
I splashed water on my face, dried my hands, and pulled the door open.
A man was standing in the hallway.
He was big with wide shoulders and thick neck. He wasn't staff.
"Ava Rossi," he said.
My stomach turned to ice.
"You're going to come with me," he said. "Quietly. Through the side door. No fuss."
He stepped closer and his hand closed around my upper arm, fingers digging in, and my back hit the wall behind me.
Cillian was thirty feet away. I'd been gone for maybe three minutes, which meant he was already counting. Cillian counted everything. He counted minutes and exits and the number of times I smiled at other men. He was definitely counting right now and when he hit whatever number his patience ran out at, he was going to come looking for me, and when he found a strange man's hand on my arm in a dark hallway, someone was going to die.
I had been having a genuinely nice evening for the first time in months. I had just held this man's hand under a table and felt something real and I was not, absolutely not, going to let the night end with my husband committing a murder before dessert.
"You really don't want to be touching me right now," I said.
He smiled. It wasn't a nice smile. "I know who you're with. I don't care."
"You should."
His grip tightened. "Move. Now."
From the dining room, I heard a chair scrape against the floor. Then Cillian's voice, low, asking Nik something I couldn't make out.
Footsteps. Coming toward the hallway.
The man heard them too. He looked back at me and whatever he saw on my face made him hesitate, because I wasn't looking at him with fear anymore. I was looking at him with pity.
"Last chance," I whispered. "Walk away."
He didn't walk away.
His hand moved from my arm to my hair, grabbed a fistful, and slammed the side of my head into the wall.
The world went white. Then loud. Then very, very quiet.
I felt my knees give out and something warm running down my temple and into my eye and I thought, in the strange calm way you think things when your brain is short-circuiting, that I never got to finish my pasta.