Instead, I texted:Quiet tail. Eyes only. Full report.
I wasn't foolish enough to let her disappear entirely. The city was full of people who wanted her dead—or worse. Lorenzo's men were still actively hunting. The Castellanos might be eliminated, but there were other contractors who'd take that contract. And there were organizations darker than any of ours that traded in information about vulnerable assets moving through the city.
But I wasn't going to cage her either.
I would give her this. The space to find whatever answers she needed. And I would watch from the shadows, ready to unleash hell the moment anyone tried to take her from me again.
It was a compromise that satisfied neither part of me—the possessive part that wanted her locked in my bedroom, and the part that had finally learned to love her.
I turned from the balcony and headed back inside.
The morning briefing happened without her.
Marcos noticed immediately. His eyes flicked to the empty chair beside mine, then to my face, searching for information. He said nothing—too smart to ask in front of the others—but I watched him catalogue the absence, cross-reference it with last night's tension, already building hypotheses.
I said nothing. Let the silence speak. If anyone suspected she'd left, they could keep that speculation to themselves.
The trafficking routes needed adjustment. Two of our safe houses had been compromised—not by law enforcement, but by someone feeding information to a competing organization. Rothstein had surged ahead with the pier consolidation, moving product in defiance of Julietta's recommendation, and three shipments had been seized at customs.
The incompetence of it made my jaw clench.
"Get Rothstein on the line," I said.
"He's at the warehouse in Red Hook," Vince said. "Wants approval for a new route through—"
"Tell him we're rejecting the pier consolidation. We're splitting distribution across four locations. Immediately."
"Sir, that was Julietta's recommendation," Marcos said carefully. Testing whether I was acknowledging her strategy or not.
"I'm aware." I cut him off. "Execute it now."
Marcos and Vince exchanged a glance I didn't bother to pretend I didn't see. Marcos's expression was analytical—already calculating the implications. Vince's jaw was tight, hand resting near his holster. Different instincts. Same loyalty. They knew. They could read the mood in the room the way sharks read blood in water.
The briefing continued. Reports came in about Lorenzo's movements—he'd shifted his operations to a secondary compound in Westchester, was consolidating his remaining allies. The Suarez cartel was in chaos following Miguel's assassination, their network fragmenting. We had opportunities. We had leverage. We had everything except the one thing that suddenly mattered.
My phone buzzed.
Vince's man had picked up the tail. The Tesla was heading east toward the waterfront district. Julietta was moving with purpose, not panic. She knew where she was going.
I didn't ask where.
"Continue," I told Marcos, but the briefing had already lost my attention.
By ten o'clock, she'd reached the financial district. The signal placed her in a high-rise, forty-second floor, in the offices of Meridian Financial Group—a holding company that handled money laundering for half the criminal organizations in the tri-state area. Our money laundering, among others.
She was accessing the files. Pulling intelligence. Building something.
Building a weapon, probably.
The realization should have infuriated me. Instead, I felt something close to pride. She wasn't running away. She was gathering ammunition. She was preparing for war.
Just not with me. With her father.
My phone buzzed again. Different number. Different operative.
By noon, she'd visited three more locations. A private investigator's office. A courthouse records facility. A precinct where she apparently had a contact—probably someone I'd paid off at some point, now feeding her information.
She was methodical. She was smart. She was building a case.
