Page 10 of The Devils in the Details

He was still looking at me with that expression—the one that suggested he found this entire exchange irritating primarily because it made sense, which was arguably worse than if it had been stupid.

“Draft an ironclad NDA for all staff,” he said. “Today.”

“I’m already writing it.” I was. The document was taking shape on my screen, paragraphs assembling themselves with the efficiency of something I’d rehearsed in my head during the walk over.

“Also, every armed employee should be properly licensed. You should consider establishing a small legitimate private security company on paper. Documented training records, legal carry permits, great tax write-off. The government tax bureau loves organized crime almost as much as organized crime loves not paying taxes, and this is the kind of loophole that makes accountants develop feelings.”

He squinted at me. The squint was different from the blink—more evaluation, less surprise. “Have you worked for the mafia before?”

“No. I just read a lot of books.”

He continued squinting. I continued writing. The keys clicked under my fingers, a steady rhythm that filled the space between his silence and my occasional muttering when a clause didn’t parse the way I wanted.

The whole exchange crackled with something neither of us named. Ari watched me the way a man watches something he hasn’t decided whether to keep or release—measuring, assessing, those black eyes tracking the movement of my hands across the keyboard, the shift of my shoulders under the oversized T-shirt, the way I tucked one foot under the opposite thigh when I was concentrating.

I was acutely aware of being watched with a specificity that was doing inconvenient things to my pulse, the kind of focused attention that made my skin feel two sizes too small and entirely too warm for the temperature of the room.

I kept typing.

He kept watching.

The desk between us might as well have been electrified.

The door opened. Leon stood in the frame, his expression exactly as readable as a closed book in a language I didn’t speak. “Study’s ready,” he said to the room at large, though his eyes were on Ari.

I saved the document. Closed the laptop. Stood and slung the bag over my shoulder, the weight of it settling against my hip with the comfortable familiarity of a thing that had been with me through significantly worse decisions than this one.

“Lead the way,” I said to Leon, and followed without looking back at Ari.

I made it approximately two steps into the hallway before the smile broke through, wide and involuntary. I pressed my lips together to stop it.

Failed.

The smile won.

Behind me, through the still-open door, I could feel Ari Romano’s eyes on the back of my neck like a physical touch, and the part of my brain that handled risk assessment made a sound that was approximately the auditory equivalent of a warning label written in bright red letters and several exclamation points.

I kept walking.

The warning label could wait.

Chapter Three

~ Aristoteles ~

I sat in Geno’s chair. The coffee on the desk was fresh, which was the only improvement I’d made to the room so far, and the only one that mattered at seven in the evening when your back had been in the same position for three hours.

The study was quiet. The kind of quiet that comes after a decision has been made, but before the consequences arrive.

Leon came through the door without knocking. He never knocked. The sound of his boots on the hardwood was familiar—two steps, pause, the soft creak of the floorboard near the desk that I should have fixed already. His face was set in its usual neutral configuration, which told me nothing and everything at once.

I set my pen down. Didn’t look up from the ledger. “Thirty million dollars.”

He stopped. I heard his breathing change—the slight intake, held for half a beat longer than it should have been.

“The kid found it. Moved it. Money’s sitting in our accounts like it never left.” I flipped the ledger closed. “Verified it myself. Clean transfer, no flags, nothing any regulator is going to notice unless they’re already looking for it.”

Leon’s jaw worked once. His eyes did something complicated—surprise first, sharp and genuine. His hands stayed at his sides. Perfectly still.