"Ready," I say.
Chapter Sixteen: Charlotte
Thebriefingroomisempty except for Salvatore Ferretti.
He sits at the table and reviews his folder. Turns a page. Makes a note with a pen he keeps in his jacket pocket. Gold. Same as the watch. The small vanities of a man who has been living above his means for longer than anyone noticed. He finishes his coffee and sets the mug aside and straightens his papers into a neat stack, tapping the edges against the table until they're aligned.
Fifteen years of routine. The same seat, the same gestures, the same performance of loyalty, repeated so many times it probably feels real to him. Maybe it was real, once. Maybe there was a version of Salvatore Ferretti who sat at that table and meant it. Or maybe the performance was always the point, and the man underneath has been hollow from the start.
The door opens.
Claudio walks in.
I press closer to the glass. My breath fogs a small circle on the surface, and I wipe it with my sleeve and lean in again.
Claudio moves the way he always moves. Quiet. Weight on the balls of his feet. His hands are at his sides, and the Glock is on his hip and his face is blank. Not angry. Not aggressive. Empty. The mask. The face he wears when he's doing the work he was built for.
Salvatore looks up. His expression doesn't change at first. He sees Claudio and registers Claudio the way you register a colleague entering a room you're about to leave. Mild acknowledgment. Nothing more.
"Claudio," he says. "I thought you were on assignment."
"I was." Claudio pulls out a chair. Not the one across from Salvatore. The one beside him. Close. He sits and leans back and crosses his arms and looks at Salvatore with the patience of a man who has nowhere to be and all the time in the world.
"Something I can help you with?" Salvatore asks. Still casual. Still performing.
"Tell me about Apex Meridian."
The performance drops.
It's small. Microscopic. A civilian would miss it. I don't miss it. The pen in his right hand twitches. His left hand, the one with the scar, moves from the table to his lap, a withdrawal so subtle it looks like a natural shift in posture. His eyes don't change, but the skin around them tightens. The tiniest contraction of the orbicularis muscle, the one that controls the squint reflex. The body's involuntary response to a threat it hasn't consciously registered.
"I'm not sure what you mean," Salvatore says.
"Yes, you are."
"I don't know that term. Is it a company? A contact?"
"It's the name you use at meetings you attend on Tuesday nights at Marchetti Holdings. Meetings with a European financier and a military operative. Meetings where you discuss phase three and the transition and the infrastructure that's going to outlast both families."
Salvatore's composure is impressive. I'll give him that. The crack seals. The performance resumes. His face arranges itself into a look of mild confusion, the expression of a loyal soldier who's been accused of something absurd and is waiting for the punchline.
"Claudio, I don't know what you've heard, but—"
"You were seen."
Salvatore blinks. Once.
"Seen by whom?"
"A witness. Reliable. Detailed. They described your scar." Claudio glances at Salvatore's left hand, now hidden in his lap. "The watch. The conference room. The door you forgot to close."
Salvatore's throat moves. A swallow. The first real tell. The body overriding the performance, demanding hydration it doesn't need because the sympathetic nervous system has just kicked into fight-or-flight and the mouth goes dry when the brain starts calculating exits.
I know that feeling. I've been living in that feeling for weeks. And watching it happen to him, the man who put me there, is satisfying in a way that I'm not sure is healthy and don't currently care about.
"This is a misunderstanding," Salvatore says. His voice is steady, but the pitch has shifted. Higher by a fraction. Stress. "I attend meetings for the family. Political contacts. Judicial liaisons. It's my job. If someone saw me at Marchetti, it was in the course of normal operations."
"With a European financier who discussed taking down both the Bonaccorso and Castillo families?"
