"At least they're efficient." I walk up the stone steps. "Keep the line open."
"Thought you didn't need back up."
"Shut up."
The front door opens before I knock. A man fills the frame—late fifties, linen shirt, hair slicked back too neatly for the heat. His tan's uneven, but his smile is perfectly in place.
"Signor Barlowe," he says with a thick accent. "Welcome."
"Romano." I nod once. "Appreciate you answering my call.”
His gaze slides to the car, then to my hands. "Please. Come inside."
The foyer's beige marble stretches beyond the entrance toward floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the sea. Expensive oil portraits line the walls, all worth more than this house and land put together. Romano leads me down a long hallway full of locked doors.
We stop at the very end, in front of a black door with no handle.
The Black Door.
It's what the network calls itself and how it operates—a trade route that hides its cargo inside the dead. Drugs. Weapons. People. Every shipment goes through a coffin, every deal paid in silence. Once something passes the door, it doesn't come back.
A woman in a red dress pushes a covered gurney past us, wheels clicking softly on stone. She doesn't look up.
I wish I could say this is the worst I've seen on the job, but I'd be lying.
Romano punches in a code, and the door clicks open. He gestures me into a sitting room that smells faintly of cigars and lemon polish. Heavy curtains frame tall windows. A low table sits between two worn leather chairs with a bottle of grappa already open beside it.
This room is arranged to look normal for a reason.
"Drink?" he asks.
"Whiskey." I take the chair with my back to the wall.
He pours only for himself. "To what do I owe the pleasure?"
"I'm looking for someone."
"Aren't we all." He takes a sip, watching me over the rim. "Who?"
I pause before giving him her name. "Keira."
Romano's fingers tighten around the glass. A thread of muscle shifts along his jaw. He masks it with another swallow, but I catch the way his eyes drop.
He definitely knows something.
"It doesn't ring a bell. Last name?"
"Lynch. Irish. Red hair. Blue eyes. Freckles. Worked for the Doyle clan for a long time. One of the best spies in the industry."
He gives a polite shrug. "You think I run a missing persons bureau?"
"No," I reply evenly. "But you remember every name that's ever passed through your hands. I believe she was one of them."
He sets the glass down, aligning it perfectly with the edge of a coaster. "You're mistaken."
My phone vibrates three times in my pocket. Zara's code to let me know she's got something, but I ignore it for now.
"You moved a container from Red Hook the same week she went dark," I say. "No paperwork or official cargo assigned, but you received cash the same day from a deactivated account she used to access. That's not a coincidence, Matteo."
