Chapter 26
It did not care whether she starved. Zo did. The monster standing in front of her had knelt on a dirty mudroom floor and picked up her daughter’s broken toy. Tessa walked toward the brass wastebasket beside his desk. She dropped the manila envelope into it. Then the broken pieces of the jewelry box. The photograph was already in her pocket. She did not need anything else. She turned back toward Zo. She was no longer trembling. “I don’t want to go to Oregon.” Zo’s jaw tightened. “Tessa, you don’t understand the cost.” “I understand the cost perfectly.” She interrupted him. Then she stepped forward. Her small, calloused hand rested flat against his chest, directly over his heart. Beneath the tactical vest, she felt its heavy, steady rhythm. “I’ve been paying costs my entire life, Mr. Rossi.” Her voice was clear. “I prefer yours.” Zo looked down at her. The cynicism, paranoia, and isolation he had maintained for a decade finally cracked.
He did not smile. He did not offer her a romantic speech. He raised his hand and covered hers against his chest. His fingers were stained with gunpowder. Hers were rough from years of scrubbing floors. “It’s Zo,” he said quietly. Tessa looked into his dark eyes. For the first time, genuine warmth moved through her, pushing away the cold. “Okay, Zo.” He pulled her against him. The embrace was not gentle. It was fierce. Possessive. Absolute. The grip of a man pulling the person who mattered most behind the walls of his fortress. Downstairs, in the mudroom, the faded green canvas tote remained empty at the bottom of a metal locker. It would never be used for smuggling scraps again. There was no longer any need. The woman who had once carried untouched meals out of the Rossi estate because she could not afford to feed both herself and her daughter had finally taken her place at the table. What had begun with a cold dinner hidden inside a canvas bag had changed the structure of Zo Rossi’s carefully controlled world. He had built the estate as a fortress of violence, excess, and paranoia. But the thing that finally broke through its walls was not a rival family, a federal investigation, or an assassin. It was Tessa Cole, a 26-year-old maid with glued shoes, an exhausted body, a diabetic daughter, and a worn canvas bag filled with food she refused to eat herself.
