“Second team,” Luigi says from the dark. “Inbound.”
He is already at the balcony. He unlatches the door and slides it on its silent track. Night steps in. The city comes up to meet us, all fog and lights. The wind carries the river if you know how to read it. I put the phone in my pocket and press the blade once to let the man feel the line of his decisions.
“You will lie down,” I say. “You will not be brave. If you are brave, I will be surgical.”
He believes me. He lies down. I pull the cord from a curtain and bind his wrists. I do the same to the first where he groans near the desk. Luigi has already flipped the couch cushions and dragged one to the sliding door for cover that looks like furniture.
“We go high or low,” he says.
“High is cameras,” I say. “Low is neighbors. Both are bad. Outside is worse unless you like prayers.”
“Outside,” he says, as if he has heard me and then decided to ignore logic.
Chapter Eight
Isabella
I follow him onto the balcony despite the risk. A window-washer rig sits parked on the maintenance track for the weekend, locked with a company code and a willingness to be sued. He takes tools from his pocket that no man carries for fun. He opens the lock and looks at me. I climb in first because if a woman asks for a life, she has to be willing to hang it over a street.
If I die tonight, it will not be because I followed a man. It will be because I chose him and chose myself in the same breath.
Luigi watches me like he understands the difference. His mouth tightens once. Approval, fear, pride. All of it caged behind control.
The wind lifts my hair. The height presses against my ribs.
I hesitate.
It isn’t fear of falling. It is the older fear. The one my father taught me with stories, with rules, with blood. You do not trust a Moretti when your life depends on it. You do not follow one into the open. You do not choose the enemy when there is still time to choose safety.
Luigi doesn’t touch me.
He waits.
That restraint matters more than the open drop below.
“They are coming,” he says quietly. “If you say stop, we stop.”
I regard him. The man my house taught me to hate. The man who wrapped his jacket around me without asking. The man who helped me escape death.
I nod once.
The rig shivers under us. The cables sing a thin metal note that my bones don’t love. I grip the rail and set my feet where the grating feels cleanest. Luigi moves the control and we drop two floors with the whisper of a line agreeing that we can pass. He sets the rig against the glass of the unit below and nods at me through the dim light.
“Kick plate,” he says. “Right of the frame. Older model. They cheaped the install.”
I brace. I work the thin bar under the rubber lip and pry. The glass pops free a finger’s width. Not enough. He leans his weight beside me and the plate gives with a sigh. The window slides.
I slip through first and catch fabric on a hook. I swallow the sound and free it. He follows me and draws the glass tight as a seal. The room we enter belongs to no one tonight. Holiday unit. White furniture. A bowl of wooden fruit.
The condo above wakes as we move. A door slams. The men we left find the balcony and the night and the rig gone. One swears. The other calls someone and the tone he uses tells me he is used to bad news. Luigi touches my wrist. We don’t wait to hear the answer.
We travel down fire stairs that hold the aroma of lemon cleaner. Two floors down. We pause and listen at each landing. Voices rise through the well. Not to us yet. Floor thirty-eight. He checks the hall camera and the sight line to the service lift. Clear. We cross and slip into the corridor and angle for the elevator that freight uses, the one with a door dented by a careless dolly long ago.
The panel shows power. He hits the call. The doors grind apart like old teeth. Inside, the lights look tired. He steps in and I step after and he hits B for the loading dock because lobbies kill people like me. The elevator answers with a jerk.
My breath comes fast. Not afraid. Focused. The bag bumps my hip and I keep my hand on it as if the drives need my pulse to keep theirs. The box light says floor thirty-seven. Thirty-six. I let the numbers become a count. Luigi looks at me and I see the question he will not ask in a room like this. I answer with my mouth.
“Yes,” I say, and he hears everything that lives under the word.
