ANTONIO POV

I sat with the phone still pressed to my ear long after she'd hung up, as if the silence afterward might take the *yes* back if I let go too soon, as if hope was something that could slip away the second I stopped holding it.

It didn't.

“Boss?” Carlos's voice came from the doorway, careful, the way it always was when he wasn't sure what version of me he was about to walk in on — the cold strategist or the man underneath who rarely got let out for air. “Everything alright?”

I looked up at him and realized I was smiling. Actually smiling, the unguarded kind...