I can still hear the crack. That last sickening sound, sharper than the others.
“How do we know this isn’t a setup?” Dario asks, looking at me the way you’d look at a snake that crawled under your front door. “You’re a Kozlov. Your father has our brother. And you just happen to show up with?—”
I pull out the phone, open the photo, and hold it up.
Boris, crumpled at the bottom of the stairs. Head turned at an angle that necks don’t turn, eyes open, mouth slack.
Words don’t move men like this. Evidence does.
Dario stops mid-sentence. His eyes drop to the screen, and his jaw goes tight.
“He caught me in my father’s office and tried to drag me back to my room. I tased him on the staircase. He fell.” My throat tightens. “He didn’t get back up.”
Nobody speaks. I don’t let the silence settle.
“This is his phone.” I pull up the messages and set it on the edge of Lorenzo’s desk. “There’s a text thread between him and my father. They’re holding Luca at a place on Boulder, and there’s amessage from about an hour ago that says Nikolai is starting on him.”
Dario picks up the phone. Scrolls. His face gets harder with each swipe. He passes it to Lorenzo without a word.
Lorenzo reads. His expression doesn’t change, but his thumb stops moving on the screen.
“There’s been movement at the Bratva warehouse on Boulder,” one man says from across the room. “More than usual.”
The room recalibrates. I can feel it. Something in the air shifts, like a current changing direction. Not trust. Not yet. But the math is starting to work in my favor.
“She could be wired,” one of the guys I don’t recognize says. Not hostile, just practical.
“Search me. I don’t care. Do whatever you need to do. But do it fast, because every minute we spend in this room is a minute Nikolai has with Luca, and my brother doesn’t play with his food. He destroys it.”
Lorenzo sets the phone down with terrifying precision.
“You understand,” he says, “that from where I’m standing, this is hard information to trust.”
“Yes.”
“You could be here because your father sent you.”
“No.”
Dario gives a humorless laugh. “Compelling.”
I turn to him so fast my vision blurs for a second. “Do you think I don’t know what this looks like? Do you think I don’t know what family I was born into?” My voice wavers and hardens at the same time. “But I am here anyway. I came here alone. I walked into your territory carrying proof that I betrayed my father and got Boris killed in the process. Either I’m telling the truth or I’m running the stupidest bluff in history.”
Sweat slips from my hairline toward my temple, slow and obvious, and I don’t let myself break his stare long enough to wipe it away.
Dario doesn’t answer. He looks at Lorenzo. They all do.
“I found more before Boris caught me.” My voice wavers, but I push through it. “The Colombian shipment. When it’s happening. Where. I’ll give you everything. But please don’t stand here debating me while Luca is in danger.”
The room holds its breath.
Lorenzo’s gaze stays on mine for another long second. I don’t know what he’s looking for. Maybe the thing Luca always said his father could do: read a person down to the bone. See whether they’re lying, calculating, afraid, or something else entirely.
Whatever he finds, it’s enough.
“Boulder.” He turns to Paolo. “The vehicle modification warehouse. Let’s go.”
Paolo nods, already moving. “I’ll get a team rolling.”
