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On the outside, the rest of the first day is the “simple vacation” I’ve been promised. Anyone watching would see a young prime minister, touring the grounds with Giorgio, sipping an Aperol spritz at the piano bar with a book in her hand, and dining on her balcony, security on all sides. Dinner’s placed in front of me on white ceramic plates. The creamy scent of mushroom sauce hits my nose first, followed by the fresh tang of vinegar. The side salad is half burrata, a giant lump of cheese in the middle of a spring-lettuce crown; when I poke at it with my fork, the center splits in a delicious flow. I remove a few chunks of cucumber, remembering that Sofia’s allergic. Pistachio gelato’s next; the color of seafoam, it stares back at me from a cool, silver bowl.

I wish I felt like eating.

To keep myself distracted, any spare moment I get, I’m practicing Sofia’s accent, listening to her voice over audio recordings and trying to make mine match. “I’m just going to grab a shower,” I tell Flynn, sounding a bit more like her. Tonight, in an hour, I’m supposed to meet the real Sofia Christiansen, before slipping away with her into the powder room. The burning ashes of her note flicker in a dark corner of my brain, and I think, once again, that maybe I should bring it up to Flynn. But if Sofia wanted the CIA to pass me a message, wouldn’t she have given it directly to them?

Snatching one of her pantsuits from the closet (cream linen, gold buttons), I slip into the bathroom and close the door behind me, trying to recenter myself. Trying to focus only on the pleasant scent of goat soap that Giorgio’s staff have pyramid-stacked in the shower, on the cool water coursing down my body in the Italian heat. Not on Calvin, currently being escorted to the airport by Italian police; or on the Producer, somewhere outside of Vienna; or the fact that—

There isn’t a towel.

There isn’t a towel in here.

There are towels out there, by the sink. A whole stack of them. Fluffy ones. Luxurious ones. In here, there’s a three-thousand-euro suit that’ll wrinkle with water damage, a rubber-bottomed bath mat, and a loofah stick that’ll barely cover my upper thighs. Perfect. Today keeps getting better. Washing the suds from my skin, I shut off the water with a groan, suck up my pride, and peek out the bathroom door. “Flynn?”

He’s shirtless, changing into a fresh suit for the meeting. “Max?”

“Towel?” I ask, maintaining a neutral voice. No desperation.

To his credit, he’s quick about it. Respectful about it. He shields his eyes as he passes the towel to me through the door crack, and I tell him Thanks , ignoring the leap in my heart rate.

“Anytime,” he says as I shut the door and let out a breath in the fog, drying my hair and toweling off my arms, Flynn’s words from the elevator washing over me like water: For what it’s worth…I don’t blame him.

Within half an hour, we’re moving. It’s the reverse of this morning, the opposite of our arrival. I’m shoved into a shiny black Range Rover, Giorgio waving goodbye from the steps of his hotel. Instead of meeting Sofia in a tunnel, we’ll see her at a restaurant on the outskirts of Positano, a quiet neighborhood spot that’s closed for a private meeting. She’ll filter in the back, disguised, alongside the head of her special protection group and two officers recruited from the Summerlandian military (since her private security force is currently protecting me); I’ll saunter in the front of the restaurant, pretending to be Sofia.

This time, though, there’s less fanfare to our journey. Fewer flags flying. No flashing lights and no police escort. We aren’t drawing attention to the meeting. Flynn’s driving instead of Lars, schooling me on select Norwegian words. Hello, goodbye, yes, no . I learn how to say excuse me , good , and—at Flynn’s insistence— Where is the library?

“Always important to know,” he says, brightly colored houses flickering past the bulletproof glass, “even for security reasons. Libraries are safe zones. Though, the press would follow her in there.”

“It sucks that the press are after her,” I say, thinking back to Gail’s scolding over the phone.

“Of course they are,” Flynn reasons, just as annoyed as I am. “The press are awful, and she’s one of the most beautiful women on the planet.”

I stop dead, the hint of a smile—despite everything—working its way into the corner of my mouth. “You think she’s one of the most beautiful women on the planet?”

Flynn pops his lips. He’s going to try and backtrack. Big-time. “What I meant was—”

“Because logic would dictate,” I argue, arching an eyebrow at him in the mirror, “that if you think she’s extremely beautiful, and I happen to look just like her—”

Flynn raises a finger, but no words come out of his mouth.

“Boy,” I say, “for someone who claims to be all cool in a conversation, you sure walked right into that one.”

Flynn snorts. “You’re going to be cocky about this for the rest of the night, aren’t you?”

“Could be,” I say, dropping it before I have the chance to think about it too much. I go back to practicing Sofia’s accent, quietly mumbling to myself until the Range Rover slows, pulling up to the restaurant. No one’s tipped off the press, so when I step into the street—surrounded by the PM’s security team, wobbling a touch in Sofia’s stilettos—no cameras flash. It’s an uneventful stroll into the building, past outdoor tables with lemon-colored cloths, purple flowers brimming from terra-cotta pots. Inside, the restaurant should be bustling, diners chatting loudly over their risotto, but all the tables stand empty.

“Go to the back,” Flynn instructs, keeping pace at my side, and my neck cranes, glancing up at the ceiling, where those same purple flowers burst on vines, elegantly tangled like a jungle canopy. Everything’s soft, light-filled, airy.

Except me. I’m sweating already, again, and it’s not just the summer heat or the thickness of my suit. I jump when Flynn’s phone rings, and he takes the call with his finger pressed to his ear, muttering, “Mmm-hmm, mmm-hmm, all right.” And then to me: “They’re late.”

I scratch the space under my ear, uncomfortable. “Okay, do we wait back in the car?”

Flynn shakes his head. “No, kitchen. It’s been cleared. We’ll go upstairs when they get here.”

The kitchen’s at a standstill, too. Clean pots and pans, shimmering in the light. Gas cooktops, un-ablaze. I drum my fingers against the countertop, feeling—at once—at home and out of place. “How long until they get here?”

“Maybe an hour.”

I blow out a long breath, taking a seat on a swivel chair. “All right.”

Flynn peruses a few mason jars next to one of the stoves, glancing at the labels, and tip-taps his fingers on the countertop. “I know we have this asset-handler dynamic right now, but I was thinking—just a thought—that we could just be Flynn and Max for an hour. Just two people, hanging out. And then, if you want, shields right back up.”

This sounds like a dangerous plan. I fidget in my seat. “What did you have in mind?”

“We could talk.”

“About…?”

“Whatever you want, I don’t know.” He shrugs, suddenly boyish, dragging a hand over the back of his neck.

Maybe it’s the semidesperate look on his face or the eerie quiet of the restaurant, but the idea of sitting in silence for the next hour isn’t appealing. “Okay,” I begin cautiously, “why don’t you tell me a story about your work.”

This makes him smile. “CIA story time?”

“Yeah, everyone has work stories. Like, Gary the Goose.”

Flynn raises an eyebrow. “Come again?”

“Never mind. Just—there must be something. One story that isn’t classified.”

“There is…a case that comes to mind,” Flynn says, a bit hesitant. “One Gail told me about. From her FBI days…Oh, fuck it. Are you familiar with Nextdoor.com?”

I cross my legs in the swivel chair, settling in as best I can. “It’s like Facebook for neighbors, right?”

“Yeah. Lots of recommendations for gardening companies and pictures of backyard snakes. ‘Found this by my mailbox, what kind is it, is it poisonous,’ that type of thing. And then fifty people in a row commenting that it’s a harmless king snake, followed by some spam advertising for dishwasher detergent. Anyway, there’s an eighty-two-year-old woman. Let’s call her Sally.”

“Her name really was Sally, wasn’t it.”

Flynn sucks his teeth. “Yeah, it was.”

“Go on.”

“So Sally posts a picture of her tulips, accusing someone in her neighborhood of clipping them. All the heads are gone. It’s a tulip massacre.”

“Tulip decapitation,” I say, tutting. “Very serious.”

“Only, her actual next-door neighbor, Mike, takes a zoomed-in screenshot of the tulips, pointing out that there are bite marks. The deer got them.”

“Tough blow for Sally.”

“Well,” Flynn says, stroking his beard, “Sally isn’t happy about it. She’s unconvinced, and now thinks Mike is the culprit. Maybe he didn’t bite them with his teeth, but he definitely clipped them somehow. So, in retaliation, she steals his cat.”

“Oh, okay, that escalated quickly.”

“He’s an outdoor cat, so by steal, I mean she invites Marshmallow inside and gives him some trout-flavored Whiskas while they watch Murder, She Wrote together. Soon, Mike’s posting pictures all over Nextdoor.com, asking if anyone’s seen Marshmallow, because he has kidney disease and needs his medicine.”

“The cat has kidney disease.”

“Yes.”

“Just making sure I’m keeping things straight. Okay.” I urge him on with a twirl of my hand.

“Well, another neighbor, the one from across the street, who apparently spends most of his day peering out of his curtains to spy on the neighbors, he suggests, in the Nextdoor.com comments section on the original tulip post, that Mike might want to check at Sally’s house, because the third neighbor may or may not have seen Marshmallow baited into Sally’s foyer with a line of strategically placed cat treats.”

“I literally have no idea how this is going to end,” I say, leaning forward again, on edge. “Please tell me that Marshmallow’s okay.”

“Oh, cat’s fine. Mike isn’t fine. He climbed through the window of Sally’s laundry room while she was sleeping, reverse-kidnapped Marshmallow, and went back to bed at his own house. With his cat. When Sally wakes up to find Marshmallow gone and a box of her Tide pods spilled on the laundry room floor, she’s out for blood. She goes to the yellow pages to find a hit man.”

My brows furrow. “Can you find a hit man in the yellow pages?”

“No. Which is why she then goes to Nextdoor.com.”

“Nooooo, she doesn’t.”

“Oh yes. Oh yes, she does. She sets the post to ‘private’—not sure what she thinks that’s going to do—and that little blue button where you can ‘request professional services’? She requests the speedy assistance of a trained assassin.”

I bury my face in my hands. “Oh, Sally, no.”

“Everyone thinks she’s joking. Except for the people who think she has dementia, who refer her to a local assisted-living community with memory care. Well, at least one person doesn’t think she’s joking—the wannabe hit man who DMs Sally with his price, which is a hundred and twenty thousand dollars.”

“Is that steep?”

“Meh. But Sally doesn’t have her glasses on, thinks it’s a hundred and twenty dollars followed by zero cents, and hires him on the spot. Gives him Mike’s address. Turns out, the hit man was a federal agent in disguise, and now Sally’s spending some of her golden years in a penitentiary in upstate New York. Marshmallow’s living it up with Mike.”

“Wow. That was…” I puff out my lips. “That was an exceptional story.”

“Thank you,” Flynn says, fingers dancing along the countertop, and it strikes me that work Flynn and this Flynn, behind closed doors, couldn’t be more different. To the outside world, on duty, he’s stoic and sleek; here, with me, he’s chuckling through a story that features a cat named Marshmallow. “What about you? Any work stories? Tell me about this Gary.”

I shrug. “There’s nothing really to tell. He’s just the embodiment of a troubled Victorian ghost in goose form.”

Flynn laughs. “Okay, fair enough. What about stories from your restaurant?”

“I try not to think about my restaurant, honestly.”

His shoulders tighten. “Why not?”

“I don’t know, because it was a total failure?”

This actually appears to piss him off. “Jesus Christ, Max, don’t sell yourself short like that. Do you know how many exceptional restaurants folded during the pandemic? Half the state of Maine folded. It didn’t matter how good your restaurant was—how good you were.”

I swallow, barely getting out words. “How do you know it was good? What if my food was terrible?”

“I’m sure it wasn’t.”

“Yeah, but how do you know? I could oversalt everything. I could be one of those people who puts cilantro on fish.”

“Not a cilantro fan?”

“Do you want the taste of dirty dishwater on your tacos?” I ask.

“Guess not,” he says, suppressing a smile. “For what it’s worth, though, I’m proud of you. You said you were going to open a restaurant, and you did. You did the thing. Not many people can say that. I’m sure your parents were proud of you, too.”

Can’t argue with that. They always supported my dream of becoming a professional chef. When I was a kid, my mom used to sneak secret tastes of my recipes, dipping a sly spoon into the soups and casseroles before exploding with, Oh! Maximillian! You’ve outdone yourself this time. Needs more salt, though . (My mom had an undiagnosed iodine deficiency until I was eighteen. Everything, to her, needed more salt. I could provide her with just salt—and she’d say, More salt .)

What’re they up to, right this second? Is it board game night? Bingo night? They’re always going on these dates around town, laughing together in a way only two people who’ve known each other a long time laugh: heads fully back, voices to the ceiling.

All through my twenties, I kind of wondered if I’d ever have that—what they have. A relationship that lasts more than six months and doesn’t culminate in a breakup box dropped unceremoniously at your door. ( Here is your Neato Burrito T-shirt and the novelty waffle iron you left at my house, good luck, goodbye .) As I finally flicked off the lights at Frida’s, I couldn’t help but question if the pandemic wasn’t to blame—if I’d screwed up my restaurant, just like I’d never managed to find the right person. If there was something about me, at the core, that wasn’t assembled properly, and I’d forever be off-kilter, like one of those wonky tables that people keep shoving wads of napkins under, trying to balance out the legs, but your margarita is always, perpetually, just a little tilted.

My throat is starting to feel uncomfortably tight. “Thank you,” I tell Flynn.

“You’re welcome,” he says, with enough good sense to move on. He pauses by one of the mason jars, an idea practically lighting over his head like a bulb. “I think I know something that can keep us entertained for the rest of the hour. Well, ten minutes, tops, plus recovery time.”

“?‘Recovery time’ doesn’t sound promising.” I sidle up next to him, glad about the change in topic. The labels on the jars are all, obviously, in Italian—but the clear glass shows a series of bright red chilis, suspended in liquid. “Every single one of those is hot.”

“They won’t miss a couple.” His dimple pops, the temperature in the kitchen rising several notches. “I think we should eat one each, and see who breaks first.”

What a terrible but intriguing idea. “How do you know I haven’t developed a superhuman spice tolerance?”

“Oh, I’m counting on that, because I’ve already run out of unclassified stories—so we’ve got to make this activity last. Come on.” Ushering me to one of the untouched countertops, he plunks six jars of peppers onto the stainless steel, arranging them in increasing spice level.

“So you know your peppers,” I tell him, a little impressed.

“Are you impressed?”

“Didn’t say that.” I run my tongue along my teeth. “How do I know that you haven’t developed a superhuman spice tolerance?”

“You don’t,” Flynn says. He unscrews the lid on the thickest peppers, fat red plump ones suspended in vinegar. An acidic plume hits the air, stinging the corners of my eyes. I grab one with pinched fingers. “Shall we?” he asks, his pepper kissing mine—like we’re clinking cheers —and then it’s bottoms up.

My teeth nip at the tip. “Do we have to bite it all in one go? How many times do we have to chew?”

“No real rules. Just chew it up and get it down.”

I do that. “It’s not…so bad.”

“It’s fine,” he says.

“It’s not even that spicy.”

Then it hits.

“Holy fuck ,” Flynn says, immediately doubling over and laughing. Laughing so hard— burning so hard—that tears are streaming down his cheeks. “Gives a new meaning to ‘I burn for you,’ doesn’t it?”

I cough, straining. “Are you the assassin? Is this how you kill me? Because it kind of—” Hack, hack, cough . “It kind of feels like I’m dying.”

His forehead wrinkles with concern. “Should we stop?”

“No! We’re only one in.” Painful little bumps are starting to form on the tip of my tongue. “Remind me why we’re doing this?”

“Fun distraction.”

“Oh, right,” I say, as Flynn passes me the second pepper.

He chews, coughing even harder. “I think I hate this.”

“Hate in a fun way?” I’m chewing, too, waving a hand over my mouth. “It feels…It feels like the devil is tap dancing on my tongue with thorny red boots.”

By the fourth pepper, we mutually decide to stop, raiding the fridge. Milk dribbles a thin line down the skin of Flynn’s throat as I smear Greek yogurt over my tongue with a spoon.

“Flynn, you’re supposed to swish!” I tell him, mouth half-full. “Swish and spit the milk into the sink, not swallow it!”

“Woooo,” he says, dancing around with a little one-two step, like the fire has reached his feet. “I really wish you would’ve told me that about ten seconds ago.”

“Everything okay in here?” Lars says, popping his head in.

And Flynn has to wave him off with a thumbs-up.

After Lars leaves, Flynn and I catch each other’s eye—and absolutely burst out laughing. Because this is ridiculous. This whole thing is ridiculous. The peppers, the milk, the two of us, in Italy, waiting on a prime minister. I’m half-hysterical. I’m uninhibited.

It just comes out. “Did you ever look me up?”

Before the mission, I mean. Before the CIA tracked me down.

Flynn stills, hand on his stomach, but his face is soft. “Of course I looked you up,” he says quietly. His Adam’s apple bobs in a way that tells me, just maybe, he’s nervous. “Did you look me up?”

Yes. Too many times. I even thought about getting back in touch, but there’s a noticeable lack of information about Flynn online. Makes sense now. He doesn’t even have any photos tagged on Instagram; his profile picture is a husky in a Christmas sweater.

I wonder if this is the time to break out the pesto . Instead, I say, just as quiet, “Once or twice.”

The room’s getting warmer. We’re not quite as close together as we were in the elevator, but if he reached out, he could run his thumb over the seam of my mouth. He’s gearing up to say something. I can feel it. The weight of his words building between us.

Then his phone buzzes, agitated, on the countertop.

“Flynn here,” he says, clearing his throat, and we’re snapped back into the mission. Thank goodness…right? Did I even want to go wherever he was about to take me?

Flynn hangs up the call with a deep breath, motioning me to follow him upstairs. “The PM beat traffic. Let’s go.”