“They wanted Nico broken.”
By dawn, Nico knew it too.
That same morning, Leah asked to see him.
He came alone.
“You should leave the city,” he said before she could speak.
Leah gave him a flat look. “You’ve met me, right?”
“This isn’t a negotiation.”
“No,” she said. “It’s memory.”
She told him what she remembered: the phrase, the timing, the implication.
Nico listened without interrupting.
When she finished, a terrible clarity settled over his face.
“They needed me alive long enough to do what I always do,” he said.
“Start a war.”
“Yes.”
“And you didn’t.”
“Not yet.”
Leah held his eyes. “Then don’t.”
“You keep asking impossible things.”
“You keep acting like impossible is new for you.”
For a moment, something like anger flashed between them, but it burned too close to honesty to last.
Finally he said, “If I do this your way, I lose more than men.”
“What are you really afraid of losing?”
He looked toward the window where dawn washed the city in a pale gray light.
“My daughter’s last excuse for loving me.”
Leah softened.
