Mine To Watch

Chapter Three:Dinner With A Stranger

He knocked four days later holding two reservation cards like a peace offering.

"I know you said you needed space."

Julian stood in the hallway, jacket on, not pushing his way in, not even leaning on the frame.

"I'm not here to change your mind about that. I just thought — somewhere public. People around. No pressure to talk about anything you don't want to."

She should have said no. She'd spent four days rehearsing the no.

"Fine," she said instead. "But I'm choosing the restaurant."

Something flickered across his face — surprise, maybe amusement — gone before she could name it. "Deal."

She picked somewhere loud and crowded on purpose, the kind of place with too many witnesses for anyone to try anything, though she couldn't have said out loud what anything meant, only that the word had been living in her chest since Delphine's voice cracked over the phone.

He doesn't exist.

"You've barely touched your wine," Julian said, watching her over the candle between them.

"I'm driving."

"You walked here."

"I might walk somewhere else after."

His mouth curved, not quite a smile. "Careful. That almost sounded like a threat."

"Maybe it was."

He laughed — a real one, low and surprised out of him — and for one unguarded second she remembered exactly why she'd let a stranger into her apartment three weeks ago, why she'd let him kiss her against her own kitchen counter like he'd been waiting his whole life for the chance.

Then she remembered the photo.

Folded, carried, and the warmth curdled fast.

"Can I ask you something," she said, "and you actually answer it?"

"Depends on the question."

"That's not a yes."

"It's an honest no." He set his glass down, gave her his full attention in a way that felt, as always, slightly too complete. "Ask."

"Is Julian Cade even your real—"

A shadow fell across the table before she finished the sentence.

He was older than Julian, broader through the shoulders, with a face that shared just enough bone structure to make the resemblance land wrong in her stomach before her brain caught up. He didn't sit.

He just stood there with his hands in his pockets, looking down at Julian with an expression that dropped the temperature at the table several degrees.

"Didn't expect to find you here," the man said. "Playing house already. You move fast."

Julian's jaw tightened, the calm falling out of his face for the first time since she'd met him. "This isn't the time, Marcus."

Marcus.

The name hit her like a hand around her throat. She looked between the two men, and the resemblance sharpened into something she couldn't unsee.

"Marcus?" She heard her own voice come out thin. "I thought your name was Julian."

Marcus's mouth curved into something that wasn't quite a smile at all. "Oh, he didn't tell you? Not surprising. He's always been better at leaving things out than most people I know."

He leaned down, addressing her directly for the first time, and she caught the faint smell of cigar smoke on his jacket. "Julian's his middle name. Cade's our mother's maiden name. Voight's the one that matters."

"Marcus." Julian's voice dropped, an edge in it she'd never heard before. "Walk away."

"Or what." Marcus straightened, unbothered, glancing around the restaurant like he owned every table in it — and given the way the staff near the kitchen suddenly found somewhere else to be, he very well might. "You've been sitting on this for weeks. Family's asking where you keep disappearing to every night. I told them not to worry. Said you were handling a loose end."

"Get out."

"I'm going."

He straightened his jacket, gently, and turned that same assessing look on Nora — something between pity and appraisal that made her skin crawl. "Nice to finally meet you. He talks about you more than you'd think."

He leaned in, voice dropping just for her. "Careful with that one, sweetheart. He's not as gentle as he's letting you believe."

He walked off through a side door near the kitchen — a door the staff clearly recognized, one of them stepping aside without being asked, like he'd done it a hundred times.

Nora sat frozen, hands flat against the tablecloth, staring at Julian like she was seeing him for the very first time.

"Loose end." Her voice barely made it out. "He called me a loose end."

"Nora—"

"Your name isn't Cade." She was piecing it together out loud now, faster than she wanted, the pieces sliding into place with a horrible, cold clarity. "It's Voight, that's why there's no license, no employee record, nothing under Julian Cade anywhere. Because that's not who you actually are."

"I can explain."

"You said that last time. And last time you left out the part where your actual last name belongs to whatever that just was." Her hands were shaking again, the same shake from the night she'd found the photo in his pocket.

"Who are you, Julian, actually. No more case files. No more client confidentiality. Who is your family?"

He was quiet a long moment, jaw working, like he was deciding exactly how much rope the room could survive.

"My family runs a business," he said finally, low enough that she had to lean in over the noise to catch it. "Not the kind you put on paperwork, but Marcus runs it now. I was supposed to be part of it too, before I decided I didn't want to be — which is a decision my family doesn't exactly respect."

"What kind of business, Julian."

He looked at her, and for the first time since the hallway, since the coffee, since his mouth on hers in her kitchen, there was nothing careful left in his face at all.

"The kind where a man like Marcus doesn't threaten people he doesn't consider a real problem," he said quietly.

The candle between them flickered in a draft from the kitchen door, and somewhere behind her a waiter dropped a tray, glass shattering against tile, and neither of them so much as flinched.

"Which means," Julian said, "as of about ninety seconds ago — you are one.”