Page 63 of Sold to the Silver Foxes

I interrupt gently. “No. Different threat.” I outline Pietro’s call and leave out the phrasesdarknetandgutter rats, but I don’t sugar-coat the reality of the situation.

She listens without flinching. When I finish, she sets her mug down calmly. “Okay. Step one, Nico locks the digital gates. Step two, your lawyers load the trebuchets. Step three, we drink bourbon if it leaks anyway.” Then, a gentle shrug and a small smile.

I blink. Her poise rattles me. “You’re…remarkably chill about this.”

“The biggest thing in my life right now is that doctors are going to drill into my little sister’s spinal cord,” she says softly. “Compared to that, strangers seeing me enjoying you is nothing.”

I have no words. It’s not that I forgot about Erin’s surgery, but…I pushed it to the back of my mind because I can’t do anything about it, so I hadn’t thought of it until now. This, as awful as it could be, is nothing compared to that.

Still, I’ll take care of it. I slide off the chair, kneel in front of her, hands on her knees. “I’m sorry I invited this risk into your life.”

She strokes my hair back, smile rueful. “I volunteered, remember?”

“Because I waved money.”

“I could have said no.”

Not really. Not with her sister’s life on the line. We don’t say it, but the guilt gnaws at me all the same. “You’re not mad at me?”

“Why would I be?”

“My family doesn’t forgive like you. I’m used to grudges.”

She smiles again. “Grudges can be useful if they remind you to be wary of someone untrustworthy. But I trust you, Dante. You didn’t do this to me. We did this together. What’s done is done. Don’t beat yourself up over it.”

“Just like that?”

“Just like that.”

I take the first full breath since Pietro’s call and sit next to her. “I keep screwing up. My family chalks it up toDante being Dante. I guess I’m just used to getting yelled at when things go wrong.”

She huffs through her nose. “Maybe stop acting like a screwup.”

That lands with surprising gentleness, not judgment. She continues, “When I was younger, my whole world was dance. Dancing made me feel alive.”

“That’s how I feel when I take risks.”

She nods. “School bored me. Boys weren’t even on my radar. I only ever wanted to dance. My parents loved that I found my passion, but hated that my grades were subpar. I was groundedall the time. I went from school to dance class to home; that was it until my grades improved.” She smirks.

“But that didn’t work?”

“It was exactly what I wanted. Hell, I would have skipped school completely if I had the chance. None of that mattered to me. Only movement. I was the only child and the family screwup for years.”

I might not be an only child, but family screwup? Yep. “So, what changed?”

“Erin was born.” She pauses, staring at nothing. “She was so different from me. I tried to teach her how to move, how to dance. But she was too little for that, and when she was older, it didn’t get better. She didn’t have the feet or the coordination. It was like asking a water buffalo to compose a symphony.”

I snort a laugh. “That bad?”

“My sister has four left feet.” Tabitha pauses, thinking. “Eventually, I realized she wasn’t the one who had to change. It was me.”

“What do you mean?”

“I wasn’t just a dancer anymore. I was a big sister. When I realized that, I wanted to be more than just the dancer in the family. I taught her to readGreen Eggs and Hamat two, and over the years, I understood that was where her talent was. Books, learning. And I wanted to be someone she was proud to call sister, so I locked in on my studies. I boosted my grades so my brilliant kid sister wouldn’t be embarrassed by me.”

The thought makes me grin. “She’s really that smart?”

“She hides it because she doesn’t want to intimidate others, but she read every book she could get her hands on in the library when she was a little kid. She learns online by herself since the tumor forces her back and forth from public to homeschool, but that just means she’ll graduate soon if the surgery goes well…” Her smile turns wistful when she looks at me. “Taking an interest in what she loved fixed my tunnel vision. It might help you too.”

---