Page 20 of One Secret

I soften my face and my voice before asking with genuine sincerity:

'Why do you need to go to the island?'

Slowly, Cyrus begins to mirror me. His shoulders loosen and his posture bends. He looks me straight in the eye.

'I'm looking for someone,' he admits with the same honesty.

'Who?'

Again, quiet. And then…

'Telling you would bring you further into this. Neither of us want that.'

I measure his response before nodding.

'All right. I trust your judgment.'

He seems momentarily stupefied.

'So...' I ponder slowly. 'It's important that you go to this event?'

'Yeah.'

'And it would be helpful if I'm there, playing the little woman?' I add.

Cyrus goes silent. The tension in the room seems to grow again. Like a rising sealine, it's ready to divide us, already lapping around our legs in isolating waves.

'Come on, Cyrus,' I entreat, before the waters can rise higher, blocking us from one another entirely. 'I'm not trying to be an arsehole. It's a simple question. Either it's helpful or it isn't.'

'It doesn't matter if it's helpful,' he says. 'You're not going. It's too dangerous.'

'Argh,' I growl in frustration. 'For fuck's sake, Cyrus, you're my occasional fuck-buddy, not my guardian defender. That guy said Nisí tou Chrysoú, right? That's Greek. I'm sure I can find it. I'll go myself, if I have to.'

At least if I attend whatever this thing is, I can witness my own leverage material and redress the power dynamic. That's my working theory. And, right now, it's feeling like my only protection against deportation.

"The best defense" and all that…

Now, Cyrus looks really flustered. Like the fish he's hooked might just be a great white and he doesn't know how to let go of the rod. Calculations are zipping behind those pretty eyes of his as he searches for a way out.

Apparently, he lands upon the charm offensive.

Levering his weight back onto his feet, Cyrus takes a step forward and transfers his hands from his table to mine. One broad palm stretches over the wood either side of my waist.

'Baby...' he says, the whispered endearment one I normally only hear whilst he's inside me... 'This place is going to be filled with dangerous people wielding big guns. I'm not exactly the humble contractor that I told you I was.'

'Really?' I ask, with added melodrama, before falling into the flattest deadpan. My eyebrows, I'm sure, are falling as dead level as my voice. 'You shock me.'

'I'm serious.'

'So am I! You think I haven't surmised what you do for a living? Not that I'm actively trying to work it out, mind you. But I'm not an idiot. So far, I'm down to enforcer, assassin, or human trafficker.'

'And you're still here?' he asks with that mild surprise of his.

Not wanting to look at my wonky priorities too closely, I hedge:

'What can I say? You're good in bed.'

And on the floor. And against a wall… and that one time on the roof of my building…

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