Chapter 10 - Caleb Smiled Like I Still Belonged to Him

The next afternoon, Caleb arrived at the café carrying white tulips.

They were my favorite flowers.

For three years, I had taken his remembering small things as evidence of love. Watching him cross the plaza with that familiar careful smile, I finally understood that attention could be a weapon too. He knew how I took my coffee, which side of the bed I preferred, and which songs I skipped when I was sad. None of those facts proved tenderness. A person planning around you could study the same details for entirely different reasons.

I sat at an outdoor table beneath a striped awning. Dominic’s people were somewhere in the park. I did not know exactly where, by design.

A microphone rested beneath the collar of my coat.

Caleb stopped beside the chair across from me.

“Harper.”

I looked at the flowers but did not take them.

He sat.

For several seconds, he performed remorse beautifully.

He said Chloe had been a terrible mistake. He said he had been drinking. He said wedding stress had distorted everything. He said he loved me.

I let him talk.

That unsettled him more than anger would have.

Finally he reached across the table.

I moved my hand away.

His gaze dropped immediately to my bare ring finger.

There it was.

Not heartbreak.

Alarm.

“Where’s your ring?”

“I threw it.”

His expression flickered.

“Where?”

I almost smiled. “That’s what you care about?”

“No. Of course not. I just—Harper, it was expensive.”

“More expensive than our relationship?”

He leaned back and exhaled like a patient man dealing with an unreasonable child.

“I deserve that.”

“You deserve worse.”

“Yes.” He lowered his voice. “But there are things you don’t understand. People around me are dangerous. I was trying to keep you outside of it.”

“By sleeping with Chloe?”

Pain crossed his face with professional timing.

“That had nothing to do with the business.”

The business.

He had given me the word without being asked.

“What business?”

He hesitated.

“Some clients I took on. They became difficult.”

“Salerno?”

For the first time, Caleb’s mask slipped.

Only for a second.

Then his face softened again. “Who told you that name?”

I said nothing.

“Harper, listen to me very carefully. If someone named Salerno approached you, you need to tell me.”

“What about Enzo?”

His hand tightened around the coffee cup.

I heard Dominic’s voice faintly through the earpiece hidden under my hair.

Enough. Leave.

I ignored him for one more question.

“Why do you need my father’s warehouse?”

Caleb stared at me.

Then the remorse vanished completely.

“You went there.”

Not a question.

My heart beat hard.

He leaned forward. “Did you open the basement?”

I stood.

Caleb caught my wrist.

“Sit down.”

Every chair scrape around us suddenly sounded loud.

I looked at his hand until he released me.

“You don’t get to touch me anymore.”

He lowered his voice. “You have no idea what you walked into. Your father stole records from people who kill for less. I have spent years keeping you from being dragged into this.”

“By trying to steal the building?”

“I was trying to remove the problem.”

“For Enzo?”

His eyes sharpened.

Then he smiled again, and this smile frightened me because there was no warmth in it.

“So that’s who found you.”

I felt cold.

Caleb had guessed wrong. He thought I was with Enzo, not Dominic.

That mistake was useful.

I stepped back.

“We’re done.”

“Harper.”

“I mean the wedding. The relationship. Every paper you ever put in front of me.”

He stood too.

“You cancel that wedding and people will die.”

I stopped.

He realized he had gone too far.

But it was too late.

“Who?” I asked.

Caleb’s jaw worked.

Then he said, “You think Chloe escaped by herself?”

My pulse slammed.

“What did you do?”

“Nothing yet.” He picked up the tulips. “But there are consequences when people break agreements.”

Dominic’s voice came through my earpiece again, colder now.

Walk away, Harper.

This time I listened.

I crossed the plaza without looking back. Halfway to the street, Dominic fell into step beside me, dressed like any businessman leaving lunch.

“You ignored the twelve-minute limit,” he said.

“He threatened Chloe.”

“I heard.”

“He also thinks Enzo found me.”

“I heard that too.”

I looked at him.

A dangerous calm had settled over his face.

“What?”

Dominic glanced back toward the café.

“If Caleb thinks you are with Enzo, then someone is feeding Caleb incomplete information.”

“And that helps us?”

“It tells me the leak and Enzo are not the same person.”

Before I could ask what that meant, Dominic’s phone rang.

Marco’s name appeared on the screen.

Dominic answered.

His expression changed.

“What happened?” I asked.

He ended the call.

“My uncle is on his way to the Langford.”

“Why?”

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Dominic looked at me.

“He says he knows you have Antonio’s ledger.”