Cole didn’t move for a long moment.
He just stood there, the laptop closed beneath his hand, his expression carved from something sharp and controlled. The kind of calm that only exists right before something catastrophic.
I swallowed hard. “Cole… what do you mean someone else is coming?”
He lifted his gaze to mine — steady, intelligent, unreadable. “Sit, Aria.”
“I don’t want to sit.”
“You need to.”
His tone wasn’t commanding. It wasn’t gentle. It was something in between — the voice of a man who had already calculated the danger and didn’t want to waste time arguing.
My legs felt weak as I lowered myself into the chair.
Cole sat across from me, folding his hands. “The Vipers aren’t the only ones Elias contacted.”
My pulse spiked. “Who else?”
Cole hesitated — and that alone terri
