"Then I figure something else out. But I'm not hiding you. Not from him."
The words settle over me. He's not asking permission. He's telling me his plan. And the plan involves walking into a roomwith the most powerful man in the city's underworld and telling him that his right hand, his most trusted weapon, has fallen for the civilian prisoner they were supposed to interrogate.
"Leone, if he says no..."
"He won't."
"But if he does."
His eyes hold mine. "Then he and I will have a problem. And I don't have problems with Aurelio."
He leans in and kisses me. Brief, hard, possessive. Like he's stamping his signature on my mouth. Then he stands, ads his jacket, and walks out.
The lock doesn't click behind him.
I stare at the door for a long time. No lock. For the first time since I was brought here, the door isn't locked.
It's not freedom. But it's trust. And from Leone, trust might be worth more.
I shower, dress in the clothes that have accumulated in his closet over the past week. My clothes, technically. Someone, probablyLeone, arranged for things in my size to appear. Simple stuff. Dark jeans, plain tops, a few sweaters. Nothing flashy. Nothing that draws attention.
I sit at the desk and pull the financial documents toward me.
The Cyprus accounts have been nagging at me for days. Six shell corporations, all registered within the same eighteen-month window, all routing money through the same bank in Nicosia. The transfers to Castillo-linked accounts are obvious once you know what to look for. Steady, predictable, timed to coincide with weapons purchases and mercenary contracts.
But this morning, with a clearer head and the fog of tension finally lifted, I see something I missed before.
The money doesn’t flow one way.
I pull three separate transfer logs and lay them side by side. The first shows funds moving from Cyprus to Castillo accounts. Standard. Expected. But the second shows a parallel stream moving in the opposite direction, from accounts linked to Bonaccorso operations into the same Cyprus bank. Different shell corporations, different routing, but the same destination.
Someone is skimming from the Bonaccorso’s and funneling it through the same pipeline that funds the Castillo’s.
I sit back in the chair, my pulse hammering.
This isn’t a third-party funding one side of a war. This is someone with fingers in both families. Someone who profits regardless of who wins. The Castillo’s think they're getting outside support. The Bonaccorso’s don't even know they're being bled. And the money all converges on the same point, the same invisible hand, before scattering into a dozen untraceable endpoints.
I grab a pen and start mapping it. Arrows. Circles. Dates cross-referenced with transfers cross-referenced with known Castillo operations. The picture that emerges is ugly.
Whoever this is, they're not backing the Castillo’s. They're playing both sides against each other. Feeding the war, profiting from the destruction, and positioning themselves to pick up whatever's left when the smoke clears.
One detail catches my eye. A single transfer, larger than the rest, routed through a subsidiary I haven't seen before. The name is generic. Apex Meridian Holdings. But unlike the other shells, this one has a physical address. Not in Cyprus. In New York.
I circle it three times and underline it twice.
This is the thread. If I pull it hard enough, the whole thing unravels.
I'm so deep in the documents that I don't hear the knock until it comes a second time.
"Yeah?"
The door opens. Not Leone. Emilio.
He leans in the doorway, arms crossed, that permanent grin splitting his face. He's in a black t-shirt that's a size too small, probably on purpose, and there's a fresh bruise yellowing along his jaw. He looks like he rolled out of a bar fight and enjoyed every second of it.
"Lunch," he says.
I blink. "What?"
