Silence settles into the office. The hood fans tick as they cool. She removes her ring and places it on the desk without looking at it, like a snake she’s learned not to startle.
“Adrian has a way he hurts,” she says. “Never where it shows. High on the thigh. Under sleeves. He makes the lesson neat.”
I remember the faint marks I noticed at La Sirena and decide there are rooms I want her fiancé in with locked doors and no witnesses. I open a drawer and pullout a cheap phone buried under receipts, break the seal on the battery wrap, and pass it to her.
“New number. No names. Two rings if you can’t talk.”
She powers it on immediately, then picks up her ring with a scowl. Unclasping the diamond, she twists the setting and lets a tiny chip fall onto the desk. A tracker. No larger than a seed. Her mouth curves without humor.
“Engagement gifts,” she says. “He likes to know where I am.”
I drop it to the floor and crush it under my heel until it screams. She watches, then exhales like she’s been holding that breath since the first time he touched her.
“My father will want Moretti blood,” she says. “He’ll think you kidnapped me. Adrian has influence over him.”
“Then we need proof,” I say. “Something unmistakable that puts his hand on the trigger.”
She nods once. “The why is obvious.”
“Unchecked power. Get rid of you by my hand. The truce is finished. Then your family gets rid of me. My uncle then kills your father.”
“He’s using the Vendetta against us. Adrian is likely behind my brother’s death, too.”
“Perhaps. We need receipts.”
“He keeps things in three places. The office everyone sees. The condo no one does. The locker he forgets until tax season.”
“Which first?”
“The condo has the real things. But the office has a hard drive that mirrors his calls. He doesn’t know the mirror exists. His assistant made it after he docked her pay for a funeral she had to attend. She came to me. I doubled her salary and told her to keep it running.”
I like her more for that. I like her enough already that I keep moving before I think about it.
“Eat,” I say.
I’m already at the lowboy cooler, finding cured meat and cheese that won’t kill us if they’ve sat two days. I tear the bread with my hands. She takes a bite and her shoulders come down. Food turns the sharpness in her face to something I want to see somewhere that isn’t an office with a dead neon sign in the window.
We don’t linger. I load a small bag with a compact first-aid kit, gloves, a tiny pry bar, a multi-driver, a roll of duct tape, and the burner phones. She tucks the knifeback into the lining at her waist and tightens the strap of her heel like a woman wins a war one small choice at a time. I crack my knuckles and regret not keeping weapons here.
The office we need is five blocks away in a building that’s made of glass. We take the freight elevator because the lobby has smiles. Isabella moves like she belongs on every floor. I take the hall cameras in with a single glance. Two dead, one blind, one new. The new one points two inches low. Amateur. I ignore it and wait for her to use the code she shouldn’t know.
Inside smells like leather and the kind of cologne that suffocates secrets. The desk is a slab. The bookshelves hold more trophies than books. A large print of the city hangs over the bar. It’s hollow. It’s always hollow. The mirror behind the bar is glass with a brain. I pull the panel and take the drive. It hums a little, a nervous insect. I pocket it.
“Computer,” I say.
Isabella’s already at the tower, kneeling in the dress that’ll stop my heart when there’s time for that. She slides back the panel, finds the bay, and lifts a second drive from a cradle no one checks because they believe the desktop icon that says Backup does something useful. The assistant who made the mirror thought like a thief. I’ll send her flowers if she lives.
The door clicks. A soft, stupid sound. The kind of sound a man makes when he believes rooms stay empty for him. He’s coming because he thinks she’ll do what she’s always done. Retreat to the nearest place her name can open.
Adrian walks in with a bodyguard who wears his suit like he borrowed it for a wedding. The bodyguard sees me first. His mouth works before his hands. Wrong order. I drop him with the side of the pry bar across the throat and a fist to the place under his ear where the lights go out. He falls into the carpet like he’ll never get up again.
Adrian stops in the doorway. Recognition flashes and hardens. He lifts a hand toward Isabella the way a man calls a dog. She doesn’t move. He sees it and something ugly starts behind his eyes.
“Security,” he says, gaze on me, voice pitched for the desk mic. “We have trespassers.”
“No,” Isabella says. Her voice isn’t loud. It doesn’t need to be. “We have you.”
His smile tries to happen and fails. He flicks a look at her hand. The ring’s missing. His eyelid twitches. He should never play cards.
