I think about it. Actually consider the answer. "Yes." The word fits in a way it hasn't before. "Yeah. I am."
A soft sound against my throat that might be a laugh. "Me too."
We don't move for a long time.
31 - Logan
The basement beneath La Sirena smells like concrete and old water. It feels like a place no one comes unless they have to.
The stairs are metal, industrial, nothing like the mahogany and gilt of the floors above. My hand finds the railing out of habit. Wren's footsteps are quiet behind me, but I can hear them. She's here. She chose this.
I don't look back. If I look back I might tell her to wait upstairs.
The stairwell opens into a corridor — exposed pipes overhead, fluorescent strips at intervals, the kind of lighting that makes everything look like evidence. Three doors. The third one matters. I've been down here twice before, for situations that required this kind of resolution, and both times I did it alone. The empire runs on decisions like this one. I just usually make them without a witness.
Gunner is at the bottom of the stairs. He nods when I reach the last step — one motion, economical. His hands are at his sides, loose. He looks at me, then past me at Wren, and returns his attention to the corridor without comment.
"He's ready," Gunner says.
Two words. For Gunner, that's practically a speech.
I look at Wren. She's pale. Her jaw is set in that way she has — not braced, just decided. The brace on her right arm is a white line in the dim light. She meets my eyes and holds them, and what I see isn't fear.
She knows what this threshold leads to. She asked to cross it anyway. I'm not going to second-guess her now, in the basement, ten feet from the door.
I nod to Gunner. He opens the door.
Jimmy looks smaller.
That's the first thing. Three years of watching him move through La Sirena's corridors — quiet, efficient, always one step ahead of what anyone needed — and now he's just a man in a concrete room on a metal chair, diminished. The professional competence is gone. What's left is just a person.
He looks up when we enter. His eyes find me, then slide to Wren, and something flickers there. Surprise. Then something almost like recognition.
"You brought your girlfriend," he says. His voice is hoarse from days of disuse. "Making her watch?"
"She asked to be here," I say.
He studies her. "Didn't think you had the stomach for it."
She says nothing. She stands beside me, her hand finding mine, and she says nothing.
The silence makes Jimmy look away first.
"Why?" I ask.
He laughs — dry, past caring. "Now you want to know. Three days in this room and now you want to understand."
"Tell me."
He leans back. Looks at me with something that takes a moment to name: pity.
"We're the same, Logan. The invisible men. The fixers. The ones who make the whole machine run while everyone else takes the bows. Jorge could walk through this building and not know my face. Fuck, the amount I've given to this place, and he never even recognized me."
I don't say anything. Because I know the feeling. I've spent years signing, deciding, being counted on without being seen.The mirror Jimmy is holding up is accurate. I'm not going to pretend otherwise.
"Héctor Zayas came to me six months ago. Jorge was dying, everyone knew the empire was exposed. And there I was — the man who knew every account, every routing number, every weak point in your entire operation." He spreads his hands. "They didn't have to convince me. I was already convinced."
"You did it for the money?"
