Chapter 35 · Night

"Stay."

Nico's hand closes around my wrist before I clear the door. Not soft. Not asking twice.

"Let go." I don't turn around. If I turn around I'll see his face and I'll lose the thread of what I heard on that call twenty minutes ago, and I need to hold onto it like a knife.

"You heard something." Flat. Not a question. He already knows. He always already knows, that's the whole problem with married a man who reads rooms for a living.

"Termination clause." I say it like I'm spitting out a pill. "Once the board signs off on the merger, the marriage dissolves. Clean exit. Your lawyer's words, not mine."

His grip doesn't loosen. If anything it tightens, thumb pressed into the tendon at the inside of my wrist, right where my pulse is doing something stupid and fast.

"That's the paperwork," he says. "Paperwork isn't the deal."

"Funny. I signed my real name on the paperwork. Not the deal."

That lands. I feel it land — his jaw does the thing where it goes hard on one side, like he's biting down on a word before it gets out and does damage.

"Turn around, Eli."

"Why.