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I let his words hang for a moment because I wanted to give him a false sense of security. “You wanted my attention and now you have it. I assume you came here to negotiate,” I said. “So negotiate. What do you want?”

“The Wold company. You walk away from it, or you fold me into it on terms I’ll dictate.” He set the glass down with a soft click against the wood. “In exchange, I tell you who told me where to look. Because you and I both know the transfers aren’t what’s keeping you up at night. You can recover eight figures by lunch tomorrow. What you can’t recover from is knowing that someone inside your operation pointed me toward a woman you flew out of Delaware in the early-morning hours.”

There it was. He’d said the word woman and watched my face to see if I would give anything away. Instead, I gave him nothing. “Say it again,” I said. “Plainly. I want to hear you commit to whatever it is you think you know.”

Vincent’s mouth curved into what I could best describe as a smirk. He thought I’d handed him leverage. He thought my asking meant I needed the words confirmed because they’d unsettled me. That was his first real mistake of the evening. And I was only referring to this evening because his first real mistake was drawing my attention to him period. And he made this mistake because he’d never understood the difference between a man processing information and a man who’d already decided what he was going to do about it.

“Whoever this woman is, she matters to you,” he continued, leaning forward now, with his elbows on his knees. “Enough that you brought her into the city instead of stashing her somewhere disposable. Enough that you’ve got her tucked away while you sit across from me pretending your jaw isn’t tight.” He gestured vaguely toward my face with two fingers. “I don’t even need her name. What I have is the shape of the thing, and the shape is what sells. You’re a man with a weakness now, Cain, and weaknesses have a market price.”

“A market price,” I repeated. “You’ve been talking about price since I walked in. Let me make sure I understand the product. You want to buy Wold yourself, and in exchange you’ll sell me the name of a source you claim sits inside my operation.” I moved my hand off the back of the chair. “Except you’ve already told me you don’t know who she is. So either your source gave you everything and you’re holding it back, or your source gave you a fragment and you’re inflating it into something you can sell.”

“I’m telling you there’s a leak.”

“You’re telling me there’s a woman.” I let that sit between us for a beat. “Those aren’t the same thing, and you know it. You walked in here ready to trade a name. Now you’re hedging. That tells me the name is worth less than you hoped, or you never had it to begin with.”

Vincent picked the glass back up because his hands needed something to do, and that was the second tell of the evening. A man who’s genuinely holding the high card doesn’t fidget. You bask in the glory of the confidence you should have for finally having the advantage. As he took a sip, I decided that it was time for me to strike.

“You drink when you’re stalling,” I said. “You always have. The first time we sat across from each other, you reached for the glass the moment I asked you something you couldn’t answer. Ten years, Vincent, and you still don’t know what your hands do when your mouth cashes something your ass can’t handle.”

The glass came down a fraction too hard against the table and I watched him correct the motion a half-second too late. The glass landed with a slight thud, but I didn’t react.

“You think you’ve got me,” he said. “Like you can read me easily. Ten years and you still think the same bullshit tricks work on everyone.”

“They work on you because you’ve never bothered to change.” I came around the chair, slowly, like a predator eyeing his prey. “You believe information is power. You’ve believed it the entire decade I’ve known you. And you’ve never once understood that information is only worth what the man holding it is willing to do with it. You’ve got a fragment. You inflated it. You walked into a soundproofed room owned by a woman who answers to neither of us, and you sat down across from me believing the math favored you.”

“It does favor me.”

“It doesn’t.” I stopped inches from his chair. “But I’ll give you one more chance to make it favor you. The name. Who pointed you toward Delaware?”

He smiled again, though it had thinned now and I could see the gusto he was sporting earlier was long gone. He leaned back into the leather chair and folded his arms across his chest. “Walk away from Wold,” he said. “Then we’ll talk about names. That’s the order of operations, Cain. You don’t get the thing that protects her until I get the thing that protects me. She’s the collateral. Surely a man as careful as you can appreciate the structure.”

She’s the collateral.

I had entered this room believing Vincent’s intrusion was business. A man overreaching on a deal, making noise, hoping noise translated into a seat at a table that had never been set for him. I came prepared to dismantle that belief with words, which were usually sufficient. But he’d said collateral, and he’d said it about her, and something in me that I had spent years keeping behind glass moved without my permission.

I did not raise my voice. That was the part Vincent never understood. The men who shout are the men who haven’t decided yet. I’d decided what I was going to do and how I was going to do it somewhere between woman and collateral, and had kept quiet about it.

“Last time,” I said. “What’s the name?”

“Wold first.”

I snatched the glass off the table and threw it against the wall behind him. It shattered, amber and glass raining down everywhere. Vincent flinched the way men get frightened when they’ve finally understood they’ve miscalculated.

Then I was on him.

I reached down and grabbed the lapels of his expensive jacket, and dragged him out of the chair before he even realized it. The chair tipped backward and clattered against the floor. Vincent’s hands came up, as he tried to grab my wrists, but his self-defense skills needed work.

“The name,” I said.

“Cain—”

I drove my fist into his ribs. Once and then twice. He folded, and I let him get a brief break before I hauled him back up by the collar.

“You said collateral.” My voice stayed level. That, I knew, frightened him more than shouting would have. “You sat in this room and you called her collateral. You don’t get to put her on a table and price her. So I’m going to ask you one more time.” I tightened my grip until the fabric bit into his throat and he started turning red. “Who pointed you toward Delaware?”

“I don’t—” He coughed. Blood at the corner of his mouth now, where I assumed his teeth had caught the inside of his cheek. “I don’t have the source’s name, you stupid bastard, I have the channel. That’s all anyone ever gets. That’s all I⁠—”

I let go of one lapel and hit him again, across the jaw this time, and felt the skin over my knuckles split against bone. The pain was distant and useful. It told me I still hadn’t completely lost my shit.