Chapter 5 · He Locks It

"Which lock, Eli?" Nico's palm hit the door an inch from my head, caging me without touching me anywhere else. "The one that keeps people out. Or the one that keeps you in."

I didn't answer. My spine found the wood and stayed there.

He turned the deadbolt himself. The click landed somewhere under my ribs, hard, final, like a verdict.

"That one," he said. "Good. Now nobody walks in on this."

"On what." My voice came out rougher than I wanted.

"On me finding out if you meant it." His thumb dragged along my jaw, slow, like he had all night, like the empty apartment wasn't a job site with a fake lease and a fake last name taped to the mailbox. "You signed Eli Tan. Not a burner name. Not the one the file gave you."

"It's my name."

"I know." His mouth was close enough that I felt the word before I heard it. "That's the problem."

I got a hand on his chest to put an inch of air back between us. It didn't work — he let me push, then didn't move, so the inch stayed exactly where he wanted it, no more, no less.

"Say it's still just paperwork," I said. "Say it and I'll believe you."

"Can't." He caught my wrist, turned it, kissed the inside like it owed him something. "Contract says witnessed and consummated inside six months or the Griffins call it fraud. You know what fraud costs in this family?"

"Divorce."

"Costs you a body bag, Eli. Not a court date." His eyes didn't blink when he said it, flat and sure the way he probably said it to men right before he finished a job on them. "I didn't marry you to watch you get buried over paperwork."

That should have scared me off him. It did the opposite — my breath went shallow and my back arched an inch closer without my permission.

"So this is protection," I said. "That's the line you're using."

"This is me wanting it," he said. "The protection's just the part that gets us both out alive."

He kissed me before I could pick that apart. Not soft. He kissed like he fought, like he'd already decided the outcome and just needed my mouth to catch up. My fingers grabbed his collar to shove him off and ended up fisting the fabric instead, pulling him in, and I hated how easy that was, how fast twelve years of him being older and worse at feelings turned into heat instead of leverage.

His hand slid under my shirt, flat against my stomach, warm enough that I felt it in my teeth.

"Say your name," he said against my jaw. "The real one. Not for the file."

"Eli." It came out wrecked.

"Again."

"Eli," I said, and he made a sound low in his throat like that word had cost him something he wasn't going to admit to out loud. He got my shirt over my head. Cold air, then his mouth on my collarbone, and I stopped keeping score of who was winning.

His belt buckle hit my knuckles when I went for it — I was done being the only one half undressed — and he let me, laughing once, low, not the laugh he used on his father's men. This one had teeth in it too, but different teeth.

"You planned this," I said. "The lock. All of it."

"I plan everything." His hands found my hips, hard enough to bruise, gentle enough that I didn't ask him to stop. "Didn't plan wanting it to be you."

That's the closest thing to a confession I'd gotten out of Nico Falcone in eleven days of marriage, and I was about to say something back — something stupid, something true — when his phone lit up on the kitchen counter behind us.

He didn't look at it. I did, over his shoulder, because the screen was bright enough to cut through the dark.

**PAPA F.**

Nico's whole body went still against mine. Not relaxed-still. Finisher-still, the kind of stillness I'd only seen in him once before, right before he put a man's hand through a table.

"Ignore it," I said, and pulled his collar back down to my mouth.

He didn't move. His jaw was locked somewhere past my ear, staring at that screen like it had teeth.

"Nico."

"Give me a second."

The phone buzzed again. Then again — three calls in under a minute wasn't his father checking in, that was his father needing something finished tonight.

I felt him decide something against my skin, some cold thing sliding back into place behind his eyes, the job coming back online underneath the man who'd just had his hand in my hair.

"He doesn't think this is real," Nico said, flat, still not looking at me. "He never signed off on ninety days of me disappearing into a marriage he didn't pick. So he's sending somebody to check. Tonight. Not the toast, not some dinner where everybody smiles — somebody in this apartment, in the next twenty minutes, to see it with his own eyes."

"See what."

"That we're actually married. Not on paper. In the bed." He finally looked at me, and there was no heat left in it, just calculation running fast behind his eyes. "That's what I didn't put in the file. He's had somebody outside since sundown."

My stomach dropped somewhere past the floor. "You knew this before you turned that lock."

"I knew he'd try something. I didn't know it'd be tonight." He was already reaching past me for his shirt, and I hated that some part of me wanted to grab his wrist and ask if any of the last ten minutes had been real or just him buying time until his father's man showed up. "Eli — whatever happens when that door opens, follow me on this. Don't fight me in front of him."

The deadbolt he'd turned himself, the one that was supposed to keep everyone out, rattled once from the outside. Somebody had a key.

"Nico," I said, "who has a key to my apartment?"

He didn't answer. The rattling stopped. The door didn't open — it clicked, unlocked, and just sat there, waiting for one of us to move first.