My stomach drops. "I don't know what you're—"
"Relax. I'm not going to broadcast it. But I'm not blind, either." He stops outside Leone's door, leaning against the wall. "He's different since you showed up. Looser. Still terrifying, obviously,but there's more in there that wasn't before." He taps his chest. "The twins notice these things."
"And what do the twins think about it?"
He grins. "Claudio thinks it's a liability. I think it's about goddamn time. Man’s dick hasn’t seen the light of day in forever. Anymore pent up and his shit will turn into diamonds."
He walks away, whistling, leaving me standing in the corridor with my heart in my throat.
Inside the room, I close the door and lean against it. My hands are trembling. Not from fear. From the stress of what's happening. The relationship that isn't supposed to exist, the secret that's already leaking through the cracks, the war that doesn't care about any of it.
I go back to the desk. Back to the documents. Back to Apex Meridian Holdings and the New York address and the money that flows both ways.
I work until the light changes, and the courtyard fills with long shadows.
Leone returns at dusk. He closes the door behind him, and I watch his face for any sign of how the conversation with Aurelio went. He's harder to read than usual. Locked tight, giving nothing away.
"Well?" I ask.
"He knows."
"And?"
"He's... considering." Leone sheds his jacket, drapes it over the chair. Unholsters his gun and sets it on the nightstand with the careful reverence of a man putting down a rosary. "He didn't say no."
"But he didn't say yes."
"Aurelio doesn't say yes to anything the first time it's presented. He processes. He calculates. He'll give me an answer when he's ready."
I nod, swallowing the anxiety. "Okay."
"Okay." He looks at me, and for a second the mask slips and I see the man from this morning. The one who held me in the dark and breathed me in like I was oxygen. "It'll be fine."
"You don't know that."
"No. But I'll make sure of it."
I want to push. I want to ask what happens if Aurelio says they can't be together, if Leone is willing to defy the man he's servedfor twenty years, if this thing between us is strong enough to survive the world they've built.
Instead, I say, "I found more. In the financials."
His focus shifts instantly. The soldier snapping back into place, alert and hungry for intel. "Show me."
I walk him through it. The parallel money streams. The skimming from Bonaccorso accounts. The convergence point in Cyprus and the trail leading to Apex Meridian Holdings. His face gets darker with every word.
"Someone is bleeding us," he says when I finish.
"Someone is bleeding both of you. The Castillo’s think they're getting funded by an ally. You didn't even know you were being drained. And whoever's pulling the strings is sitting in New York, collecting from both sides."
Leone stares at the documents spread across the desk. His hands are flat on the surface, fingers spread, and I can see the tension in his forearms, the tendons standing out like cables.
"Apex Meridian Holdings," he repeats quietly.
"It's the first real name in the chain. Everything else is ghost corporations and routing numbers. But this one has an address. A physical location. That means people. Employees. Records."
He's quiet for a long time. Then he gathers the documents, careful and methodical, stacking them in order.
"I'm taking this to Aurelio tonight."
