Page 20 of The Devils in the Details

I looked at it. I always look at phones when they light up. In my world, phones that light up at the wrong time usually mean someone’s dead or about to be, and I prefer to know which.

This was worse.

A photograph. High resolution, clean angle—street camera or phone, didn’t matter. The image was sharp enough to count the pores on Theo Romano’s face as he walked down a Florence sidewalk, his head turned slightly toward the camera, his expression the blank pleasantness he wore when he thought no one was watching him.

Underneath, text. Zephyr’s text. I recognized the cadence before I registered the words, which was its own kind of problem.

Do you know this man? He’s been following me for the last six blocks.

I was on my feet before the last word processed. Chair scraping hardwood, the sound loud in the quiet room. My hand was already moving—a single gesture, flat-palmed, cutting sideways through the air—and Leon was already turning toward the door because that’s what happened when I gestured. No questions. No clarification. The gesture meant move, and Leon moved.

The remaining men—two from the dock crew who’d lingered near the doorway, plus the head of security who’d been standing in the hallway—were already in motion. They’d seen the gesture. They’d seen my face. They didn’t need the context.

Context was for people with time, and we were fresh out.

I picked up the phone. Typed back. Four sentences, no wasted characters. My thumb moved across the screen with the efficiency of a man writing his own name on a death certificate.

Location, now. Stay where people can see you. Do not go anywhere dark. I am coming.

I didn’t add anything warmer. Warmth was for people who weren’t currently calculating how many minutes it would take to reach central Florence, how many men I would need, and what I was going to do to my cousin when I found him standing anywhere near Zephyr Kontos.

The response came before I’d set the phone down.

Piazza del Duomo.

I filed this away with the cold precision I applied to everything that mattered. Piazza del Duomo. The cathedral square. Open, crowded, tourist-heavy even at this hour. The kind of place where a man could vanish into a crowd if he needed to, or where a man could be easily found if someone was looking.

Zephyr had chosen well. Deliberately well. The kind of well that suggested his self-preservation instincts were considerably sharper than his apparent indifference to danger would have you believe.

Reassuring.

Also irritating.

A man with good instincts had fewer excuses for walking into a mafia boss’s house and making himself impossible to ignore, and I would have preferred the excuses.

Excuses were simpler than the warm, inconvenient thing currently sitting behind my sternum that had nothing to do with security and everything to do with the fact that someone had followed him, and I hadn’t been there to prevent it.

I pocketed the phone. Pulled my denim vest straight with one hand, feeling the weight of the knives settle against my ribs where they belonged. The silver herringbone chain caught the overhead light, threw it back.

“Piazza del Duomo,” I said to the room. Not raised. Didn’t need to be. The men were already at the door, already moving, boots on hardwood, the sound of them fading toward the garage where the vehicles were kept running because in my house, vehicles were always kept running.

Leon was at my shoulder. Of course he was. His hand was already on his firearm, not drawing it, just resting there, the particular stillness of a man who understood exactly what came next and had already decided how many bullets it would require.

“Range Rover,” I said. “You drive. I need both hands free.”

He nodded. Didn’t ask why. Didn’t need to.

The study emptied in under thirty seconds. Door closing behind us, the cigarette smell left to settle back into the curtains where it belonged, the overhead light still burning because nobody had thought to turn it off and nobody was going back to check.

The hallway was cool and dark and empty. The garage door was already rolling up when we reached it. The Range Rover’s engine was running, exhaust pooling on the concrete in pale gray clouds, the headlights cutting twin beams through the gathering dark.

I didn’t look back at the house. Didn’t need to. The fifty-three problems on the list would be there waiting, patient as graves.

Right now, there was only one problem that mattered, and it was standing in a crowded square in central Florence with caramel on his fingers and my cousin behind him, and I was going to solve it the way I solved most problems.

With my hands.

The lighter clicked open as I slid into the passenger seat. Held the flame for a count of two. Snapped shut.