My legs cramp from tension, so I pace the perimeter. Every inch of me aches, but collapsing feels like losing. I search for bugs, for cameras, for any crack in the pretty walls. Three cameras hidden in the furniture—one in the lamp base, one in the smoke detector, one in the frame of a painting I’m sure cost more than my apartment. No obvious microphones, but I hum to myself anyway. If they’re listening, let them hear me not breaking.
I stop at the window and press my forehead to the cold glass.
The city pulses below, alive and indifferent. Up here, sealed in burgundy and gold, I’m already a ghost. A body waiting to be processed.
Tomorrow, he said.
Well then, meat head. I’ll be ready.
Will you?
I dream of Viktor.
Not the Viktor who tried to warn me when he was frantic, sweating, pupils blown wide with fear. The Viktor from before, from the handful of weeks when things were simple. He’s sitting across from me at that dive bar on Ninth, the one with the sticky floors and the jukebox that only plays sad country songs. He’s rolling a joint with those quick, practiced fingers, grinning at me like I’m the funniest thing he’s ever seen.
“You’re too smart for this shit, Ales” he says, licking the paper closed. “You know that, right?”
“Smart doesn’t pay my dad’s debts.”
He shrugs, lights the joint, takes a long drag. The smell of weed wraps around us like a blanket. “Nothing pays those debts. That’s the point. They’re not meant to be paid. They’re meant to own you.”
I wake with his voice still echoing in my skull.
The burgundy room is gray with pre-dawn light. My stomach growls. I haven’t eaten in at least a day. I flex my fingers and count the bruises blooming on my arms. Purple and green, a watercolor of violence.
Three crisp knocks at the door.
“Yeah?” I keep my voice bored, unimpressed.
The door opens. Two guards enter first, suits, earpieces, faces carved from stone. One positions himself by the door, the other behind me. Leone walks in after, and even without the gun visible, the danger rolls off him in waves. That body. That stillness. Built like a weapon someone forgot to put away.
He sits. Folds his hands. Stares.
“You here to watch me eat breakfast,” I ask, “or are you the breakfast?”
Leone lets three full seconds pass before answering. “You’re going to tell us about Marco Castillo.”
I snort. “Never heard of him.”
“That’s not what Viktor said.”
The name hits me like a slap. I keep my face blank, but something must show, because Leone’s eyes narrow a fraction.
“Viktor who?” I manage.
“Viktor Sava. The man who warned you. The man who thought he could steal from the Bonaccorso family and run.” Leone pauses, letting each word land. “The man who’s currently in our basement, telling us everything he knows about you.”
I shrug and examine the ceiling. “Great decorator, by the way. Very consistent palette. If you’re going to torture me, you could at least do it in a room with some taste.”
Leone ignores that. “You’ll talk. People always do.”
“Then why am I still breathing?”
He doesn’t answer. Instead, he leans back and studies me like a specimen—a bug he hasn’t decided whether to crush or pin to a board. His jaw ticks once.
“Viktor warned you,” he says again. “Why?”
I think about the dive bar, the joint, the sad country songs. Viktor wasn’t my boyfriend. We hooked up a few times when I was bored and he was high, but that’s all it was. Sweat and smoke and nothing that mattered.
