I rack the slide and tell myself it means nothing.
Chapter Two: Charlotte
ThefirstthingIdo when I wake up is count the ceiling tiles.
Fourteen across. Nine deep. One hundred and twenty-six total, minus the two above the bathroom door that are cracked and yellowing from moisture damage. I know this because I've counted them eleven times in two days, and if that sounds obsessive, you've never been locked in a room by men with guns who brought you nice sheets as a consolation prize.
I swing my legs off the bed and sit on the edge, bare feet on cold tile. The room is nicer than any apartment I've ever rented, which is either a compliment to Aurelio Bonaccorso's hospitality or an insult to my life choices. Probably both.
The sheets are Egyptian cotton, high thread count, the kind that whisper against your skin when you roll over. The bathroom has actual towels, not the sandpaper rectangles I've been buying inbulk from Target for three years. There's a window with heavy curtains, and beyond it, a courtyard full of men who would kill me as easily as they'd light a cigarette.
Speaking of cigarettes.
I dig through the pockets of the jacket I was wearing when they grabbed me. The pack is crushed, bent almost in half from being shoved into the back of an SUV by a man built like a refrigerator with a personality to match. Three smokes left. I tap one out, straighten it between my fingers, and realize I don't have a lighter because Claudio fucking DiAngelo confiscated it along with my phone, my keys, my wallet, and every shred of autonomy I've spent three years building.
"Shit."
I put the cigarette between my lips anyway. Unlit. The taste of the filter is enough. Tobacco and paper and the faint chemical burn of whatever they coat these things with. I started smoking the week I got to the new city, the week I became Charlotte Richardson. It was the only vice I allowed myself because everything else about my new life was so goddamn controlled. New name, new wardrobe, new posture, new way of speaking. I even changed the way I laughed because my old laugh sounded too much like a woman I was trying to kill.
The smoke hangs from my lip while I stand and walk to the window. The courtyard is grey in the early light. Two guards at the east gate, one at the south entrance, one doing a slow loop along the perimeter wall. They rotate every four hours. Iknow this because I've been watching them since I got here, and patterns are the only thing that make me feel like I have any control over a situation that is, objectively, completely fucked.
I press my fingers to the back of my neck. The vertebrae are there. Solid. Stacked like coins under skin. I do this when the fear creeps up, when the old panic tries to claw its way out of whatever hole I buried it in. It's a grounding thing. Therapist taught me, back when I could afford a therapist, back when I was still her.Feel your spine. You're still standing. You're still here.
I'm still here.
In a goddamn mafia compound. Surrounded by killers. With an unlit cigarette in my mouth and no fucking lighter.
Great life choices, Charlotte. Really nailing it.
The door clicks. I don't flinch. I've trained myself not to flinch at doors, which is a skill set nobody puts on a resume but probably should. The guard on morning shift slides a breakfast tray through the slot at the bottom. Scrambled eggs, toast, orange juice, a small bowl of fruit. I can smell the coffee from across the room. Not good coffee, either.
Instant. Yuck.
I drink it anyway. Black, one sugar, stirring it with my finger because they didn't include a spoon and I'm not about to ask for one. The heat of it burns a line down my throat and settles in my chest like a small, bitter fire. Better.
I eat standing up. Always standing. Sitting still for too long makes me twitchy, and twitchy leads to thinking, and thinking leads to places I can't afford to go right now. So I eat my eggs by the window and watch the guards.
The compound is well-maintained. Not flashy, not the gold-plated mob palace you see in movies. Functional. Clean lines, reinforced doors, cameras at every junction. The kind of place built by someone who values efficiency over aesthetics. I respect that, in a deeply fucked-up way.
I think about what I saw at Marchetti Holdings, and my stomach turns over in a way that has nothing to do with the eggs.
Three weeks ago. Late on a Tuesday. I was working overtime because I always work overtime, because overtime means extra pay and extra pay means another month of being Charlotte Richardson instead of whoever the bill collectors and the man I ran from think I still am. The office was supposed to be empty. The floor was dark. I was walking to the copy room to pick up a print job when I passed the corner conference room.
The door wasajar. Not open fully. An inch, maybe two. Enough to see through if you happened to glance sideways.
I happened to glance sideways.
Three men at the table. Two I didn't recognize. One older, silver hair, European-cut suit, the kind of man who looks like he was born in a boardroom. The younger one across from him had military written all over his posture. Shoulders back, hands flaton the table, eyes scanning the room at intervals even though they were behind a closed door.
The third man I recognized. I'd seen him in the building before. Hard jaw, thinning hair, expensive watch that caught the light every time he moved his left hand. And on that hand, a scar. Thick, raised, running from his thumb to his wrist like someone had tried to take his hand off with a knife and mostly failed.
They were talking about routes. Timelines. A payment schedule. The older man used a word I didn't understand then.Apex Meridian.He said it like a brand name, like it was something they'd all agreed to call a thing that had a different name in the real world.
Then the man with the scar looked up. Through the crack in the door. Directly at me.
I didn't breathe. I didn't move. I turned and walked to the copy room and picked up my print job and went back to my desk and sat there until my hands stopped shaking, which took approximately forty-five minutes.
That was three weeks ago. Then I found the ledgers and well… four men with automatic weapons kicked down my apartment door at 2 AM.
