Page 28 of The Devils in the Details

I had my gun out before my brain caught up, barrel level with the man’s sternum, finger on the trigger guard, the weight of the thing cold and familiar in my palm.

He froze. His mouth opened. Nothing came out.

I lowered the gun. Said nothing. The subordinate backed out of the room and closed the door without a sound.

That was the moment I knew the discipline wasn’t working.

I holstered the gun. Stared at the wall. The generic Tuscan vista stared back, all wrong greens and manufactured gold, and I thought about bare feet on cobblestone and the specific way a man’s throat looks when he’s eating a caramel and doesn’t care who’s watching.

None of it was helpful.

I packed and drove back to Florence. I took the mountain road slow because the Range Rover’s suspension had opinions about speed that my spine agreed with, and because going slow meant more time before I walked through the iron-studded door and heard whatever I was going to hear.

Now I was here. Boots on courtyard stone, denim vest fitted against my shoulders, the knives riding comfortable under my arms where they belonged. The silver herringbone chain caught the last light, threw it back amber.

I went inside.

The study was exactly as I’d left it. Desk, chair, the ledger open to a page I’d been reading seven days ago and had not thought about since. The cigarette smoke in the curtains had gotten stronger, or I’d gotten more sensitive to it, which was Geno’s ghost doing what it did best: being inconvenient from beyond the grave.

I poured whiskey into a glass that was too clean. Three fingers. Maybe four. I didn’t measure. Measuring was for people who cared about the outcome, and I was fresh out of caring.

The lighter clicked open in my left hand. Held the flame. Counted to three. Snapped it shut.

Open. Shut. Open.

The rhythm matched nothing.

My pulse was its own thing, steady in the way things that have decided not to hurry are steady, and the lighter was just a piece of metal making noise because my hand needed something to do.

I crossed to the window.

Florence spread below the palazzo, ochre and amber and the hint gold that happened at dusk when the light decided it had done enough for one day and was going to make the exit memorable.

The Arno caught it, turned copper, and the bridges arched over the water like they’d been drawn by someone with a very confident hand.

Beautiful city.

I’d never particularly noticed. I never particularly cared.

Then I heard it.

Down the corridor, through a closed door, the rapid percussion of someone typing with the focused aggression of a man who was winning an argument with a spreadsheet and enjoying every second of it.

Keys. Fast. Certain. The rhythm had a rhythm — bursts of three or four, a pause, another burst, longer this time.

Zephyr.

I did not think about Zephyr.

I thought about the whiskey. I thought about the contract in Livorno. I thought about the subordinate with my gun in his face and the way his Adam’s apple had bobbed when he swallowed.

I did not think about the sound of typing down the hall, or what it meant that I could identify that specific rhythm after seven days away, or the fact that my body had registered it before my ears had fully processed it, which was the kind of mistake that got people killed in my line of work.

Good thing I was the one doing the killing.

The lighter clicked. Open. Shut.

The typing stopped. A pause — two seconds, maybe three. Then it started again, slower this time, more deliberate, the rhythm of someone verifying something they’d already verified because verification was the point and finishing was secondary.