"Don't lock that door and disappear for days. Not now. Not after last night."
I bring her hands to my mouth. Press my lips against her knuckles. Her breath stutters, and I feel her fingers relax a fraction.
"I'm not going anywhere," I say against her skin. "And neither are you."
I leave her long enough to pull Claudio and Emilio into the corridor. Claudio takes the phone, studies the image, and his face goes empty. That's his version of fury. Emilio's is louder.
"Inside?" Emilio's voice comes out like a growl. "That's taken from the east wing junction. There's only one camera at that angle, and it feeds to the security office."
"Pull the logs," I say. "Every access point for the last forty-eight hours. I want to know who was in that security office, who touched that terminal, and who had remote access to the feed."
"And when we find them?" Claudio asks.
"Bring them to me."
Claudio nods, turns, disappears. Emilio lingers.
"Leone." He drops his voice. "This isn’t surveillance. This is a message. They wanted her to see it. They wanted her scared."
"She's not scared."
"No. She's pissed. Which might be worse." He rubs the bruise on his jaw. "Want me to stay outside the door tonight?"
I consider it. An extra body, an extra gun. But Emilio outside the door means Emilio knowing I'm inside, all night, with a woman I haven't officially claimed. The twins already suspect, but suspicion and confirmation are different currencies.
"No," I say. "I'll handle it."
He gives me a look that says he knows exactly what handle it means, then walks away.
I go back inside. Alexandra is at the desk, bent over the documents again, scribbling notes with a fury that's going to tear through the paper. She doesn't look up when I close the door.
"We need to talk about Apex Meridian," she says.
"We need to talk about the photo."
"The photo is a scare tactic. Apex Meridian is the actual threat." She finally looks up, pen between her teeth, and the combination of rage and intelligence in her eyes makes my chest tight. "Whoever sent that photo wants me distracted. I refuse to be distracted."
I almost smile. Almost.
"Fine," I say. "Talk."
She pulls three pages from the stack and lays them out. "The New York address is registered to a holding company that owns twelve subsidiaries. Most of them are ghost operations, empty shells with no employees and no revenue. But two of them are real. One is a tech consulting firm. The other is a logistics company that specializes in international freight."
"Weapons distribution."
"That's my guess. The logistics company has contracts in fourteen countries. Legitimate contracts, on paper. But the shipping volume doesn't match the revenue. They're moving shit off the books, and whatever it is, it's heavy and it's expensive."
I lean over her shoulder, scanning the documents. She's highlighted key figures, drawn arrows between related entries, circled discrepancies in red. Her work is meticulous. Ruthless. She's torn this data apart the way I tear apart tactical positions, looking for the gap, the weakness, the soft spot where pressure will collapse the whole structure.
My hand rests on the back of her chair. Close to her neck but not touching. I can feel the heat coming off her skin, smell the shampoo in her hair, my shampoo, and the proximity does things to my focus that I can't afford.
"The tech consulting firm," I say. "What does it do?"
"On paper? Data infrastructure. Security systems. Network architecture." She leans back, and her shoulder brushes my arm. Neither of us moves away. "Off paper? I don't know yet.But a company that builds security systems would have access to surveillance networks, communication channels, encrypted data. The access you'd need to monitor two warring families without either of them knowing."
The implication is clear.
"They're not funding the war," I say slowly. "They're watching it. In real time."
