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I picked the earrings back up. My hands had stopped shaking.

Good enough.

I ran through the checklist in my head one more time—phone charged past ninety percent, cloud upload confirmed working an hour ago, the burner number for my editor saved under a fake contact name in case anyone ever went through my phone. Small things, yes. Still, they were the kind of precautions that felt paranoid until the day they weren’t. I knew that the day they weren’t never announced itself in advance.

I put on my uniform—black dress two inches shorter than I’d have liked, hair twisted up and sprayed until it could survive a hurricane, and lashes so heavy I had to remind myself to blink slower or I’d look like I was constantly startled. In the mirror, Camila the cocktail waitress looked back at me: bright and regular, exactly the kind of woman men forgot the second she walked away from their table. I’d designed her carefully, like every source and every alibi, and tonight she was going to walk me straight into the middle of something that could get me killed.

I thought of Mateo’s face—not the police sketch from the missing persons file but the one of him laughing at something stupid I’d said—and I put my lipstick on.

*****

The underground venue was two floors beneath the casino, past a service elevator that required a key card I’d spent three weeks earning access to by memorizing sixty room-service orders and never once complaining. Upstairs, everything glittered, from chandeliers to champagne. Down here, the air smelled like money, sweat, and something coppery underneath. The cage in the center of the room sat empty for now, with the ropes taut and the canvas already dark in one corner.

Men in suits worth more than my rent filled the rows around it, drinks in hand, laughing too loudly at things that weren’t funny. I recognized three faces from the files I’d put together—a state senator’s aide who should not have been anywhere near this building, a shipping magnate currently under federal investigation, and a man whose name I’d only ever seen attached to trafficking indictments that never quite stuck. I balanced a tray of scotch on my palm and smiled at all of them the way I’d been trained to. Simultaneously, my phone recorded every word within ten feet.

A bell rang, and the crowd surged forward as two fighters climbed into the cage, one of them already favoring his left side. Money passed between men who didn’t bother lowering their voices. I refilled a glass for the shipping magnate while he talked to the man beside him about a fighter he’d bought outright the year before.

Backstage, two fighters sat on folding chairs while a man in scrubs taped their knuckles and murmured instructions I couldn’t hear. One of them had a scar through his eyebrow that hadn’t healed right. Neither of them looked older than twenty-five. I made myself keep walking before my face showed anything.

I had names. I had photographs of betting slips. I had bank transfers traced through shell accounts. What I didn’t have—what I needed before any of this went to print—were the account numbers themselves, the ones that would turn four months of suspicion into something a judge couldn’t wave away.

Nikolai’s office sat above the arena floor, looking down over the cage. I’d clocked its location my second week here and never once found a reason good enough to go near it. Tonight, with two hundred drunk men screaming for blood and every guard’s attention nailed to the cage, I finally had one.

My pulse was loud in my ears. Somewhere below, the crowd roared—a fighter had gone down or gotten up; I couldn’t tell which and honestly didn’t have time to care. I kept my tray tucked against my hip and walked like I belonged there.

The door wasn’t locked. Of course it wasn’t. Nobody broke into a shark tank.

The heavy desk was clean enough to perform surgery on and the walls housed framed abstract art. A single lamp threw gold light over papers stacked at right angles to the desk’s edge.

Swallowing, I moved toward the table, getting to work. I photographed with my phone, hands quick, breath even.

I had my phone up, thumb already moving, three photographs deep into a ledger of numbers I’d been chasing for four months when the door opened behind me.

I didn’t hear him. I hadn’t heard so much as a footstep, and then his voice was simply there, low and unbothered.

“Interesting hours for room service.”

I froze, then slowly turned.

He’d already closed the door. He didn’t slam or lock it dramatically. He stood between me and it, jacket still buttoned despite the hour. His gray-blue eyes moved once over the desk, the drawer, and my hands, before settling back on my face.

“Mr. Golovin.” My voice came out steadier than I thought possible. “I was bringing up the order from the private table… nobody answered, I thought—”

“You thought you’d let yourself in.” He said it the way he might read a line item back to an accountant. That was worse than the shouting would have been.

He crossed the room slowly, and I forced myself to hold still instead of stepping back, because stepping back would have told him more than any story I could invent. He stopped close enough to me that I could smell his cologne.

When his hands came up, they weren’t rough, but they weren’t tender either. The touch was clinical as it moved along my waist, checking the seam of my dress for anything hidden. Then he moved his hands down over my hip, and I had to force myself to act unaffected by his touch. He slid his hands to my thigh, professional yet unhurried, definitely aware of how my breath caught, then to my wrist, where his fingers found my pulse jumping.

“Nothing,” I said, my words too fast.

“I didn’t ask.” His eyes stayed on mine the whole time. I hated how warm my skin went under his hands. I hated more that some small, furious part of me wanted him to keep looking at me exactly like he was.

I lifted my chin instead of looking away. “If you think I stole something, Mr. Golovin, you’re welcome to call security and have them escort me out.”

Something shifted behind his eyes. It was not anger but something closer to puzzlement.

He hadn’t found the phone I’d slipped under a napkin on the tray.