Page 166 of The Contract

Hands settle softly on the wheel.

Eyes forward. Knuckles gripped and pale.

A mumbled prayer slipping from his lips.

Again, I check my watch and blow out a breath.

Fucking great. Just what I need.

More shit I don’t have time for tonight.

CHAPTER 57

Dante

I scrub a hand down my face, and shake my head. “Look, Dominic. I appreciate your need to purge, but I’m sort of on a deadline?—”

“I’m the mole,” he says softly. “The traitor.”

He seems to need to get this out, so I let him. Enjoying his big reveal.

“Interesting,” I murmur. “And you’re telling me this now because…?”

His throat bobs.

Eyes glassy, haunted.

“There’s a bomb strapped under this car. In ten minutes, we’re both dead.”

“Twelve minutes by my calculation,” I say, dry. “But who’s counting?”

His eyes snap to mine. “You… know?”

I nod once.

“What I don’t know is why you? And don’t you mean I’m dead?”

My voice stays flat. Stripped bare. Less emotion and more curious.

Dominic shakes his head hard, the words catching on breath.

“They needed a guarantee. A death to match yours. Someone to take the fall.”

“Like an inside job.”

He elaborates quietly, words carved with razored precision. “Someone fluent in both Italian and Russian.” A pause stretches taut, almost painful. “I’m both.”

“Both?”

How the hell did I not know this?

Christ, millions poured into recon, surveillance, back-end data scrapes, and I don’t even know my own fucking team?

Note to self: If by some miracle I live…fire everyone.

His throat works around the next part, the shame almost tangible.

“When they threatened my family…”

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