Page 6 of The Devils in the Details

I was cross-legged on the floor in front of the coffee table, which was currently functioning as a desk because my actual desk was buried under three weeks of mail and a half-dismantled router I’d been meaning to fix.

Laptop open. Bare feet. Oversized T-shirt that hit mid-thigh and read ΚΑΛΗΜΕΡΑ in block letters across the chest, which roughly translated to “good morning” and was approximately the only Greek phrase my neighbors had ever heard me say at volume, usually at three in the morning when the upstairs guy’s music was winning.

The job posting had caught my eye because it was trying so hard not to. “Financial Records Organization Specialist.” Private family office. Competitive salary, discretion required. Must be fluent in Italian and English, with additional language skills preferred. Experience with complex financial structuring and record-keeping systems. Remote work possible, but on-site preferred.

Boring. So boring it was actually interesting, which was my exact threshold for paying attention to anything.

Before I committed to anything—job, apartment, relationship, lunch order—I dug. It was reflex. Pavlovian, maybe. Someone rings the bell of my curiosity, and my fingers hit a keyboard.

Two hours later I had a working picture of Aristoteles Romano that looked nothing like the sanitized version of whoever wrote that job posting had been aiming for.

Illegitimate son of Geno Romano, which explained why his name didn’t appear in any of the official family records until about six months ago. Dock worker background. The kind of hands-on, get-your-knuckles-bloody work that the fancy Romano cousins had never been within shouting distance of.

Took over the family after Geno’s spectacular implosion, which the internet was very happy to document in excruciating detail if you knew where to look. Inherited what looked, from the outside, like a financial crater the size of a small country.

Photos were harder to find. He was security-conscious, which I respected. But there were a few—grainy, distant, mostly taken from the wrong side of a telephoto lens.

Big guy. Six-three if the doorframes in the background were standard height. Broad shoulders under a denim vest. Dark hair, darker eyes, and a jaw that looked like it had been carved out of something that didn’t want to cooperate. A scar across one cheekbone, faint but visible even in the grainy resolution. Tattoos down both forearms, visible when his sleeves were rolled.

I had to give it to the guy. He looked exactly like what happened when you left a dock worker in charge of a crime family—which, come to think of it, was probably the point.

I submitted the resume. Clean version, work history edited for coherence rather than honesty. Languages listed in order of fluency rather than alphabetical, because alphabetical was for people who didn’t understand how conversations actually worked.

References available upon request, which was technically true if you considered my hacker contacts in six countries to be references rather than co-conspirators.

Then I kept digging, because submitting a resume and walking away was for people with impulse control. I did not have impulse control. I had caramel wrappers and a photographic memory and the kind of stubborn curiosity that had gotten me into trouble on three continents.

The shell corporations took about forty minutes to find. Malta first, then Cyprus. Layers of holding companies, nested like Russian dolls with Swiss bank accounts. The kind of structure that said “I am hiding money” in twelve different languages, all of them the language of men who thought nobody was watching.

Thirty million dollars. Give or take. Moved out of Romano accounts over the last eighteen months in increments small enough to avoid tripping automated alerts, large enough to matter when you added them up.

The timing was interesting—the bulk of the money had walked away in the three months before Geno’s death. Before the bombing. Before everything went to hell.

I sat back on my heels. The caramel wrapper crinkled under my thigh. Outside, Florence was doing its late-afternoon thing—church bells, distant scooters, the hum of a city that had been beautiful for so long it had stopped trying to prove it.

I didn’t touch the money. Moving thirty million dollars without authorization was the kind of felony that came with its own zip code in federal prison.

Also, it was boring.

Anyone could move money. The interesting part was knowing it was there, knowing where it had gone, and holding that information like a playing card you hadn’t decided whether to show yet.

I saved the files. Closed the laptop. Ate another caramel because discipline was a myth invented by people with regular sleep schedules.

Morning came through the shutters in thin gold lines that cut across my face and woke me up by being annoying about it. I was still on the floor, which explained why my back felt like it had been used as a percussion instrument.

My capri pants had twisted around my legs sometime during the night. The oversized T-shirt had migrated north, exposing a strip of stomach to the cool morning air and whatever dust had settled there in the hours I’d been unconscious.

I stretched. My spine made a sound like someone cracking their knuckles, which was either reassuring or deeply concerning depending on your perspective on spinal health.

The phone rang while I was halfway through untangling myself from a blanket I didn’t remember pulling over my head. The screen said unknown number, which in my world usually meant either a bill collector or someone who wanted to sell me something I didn’t need.

I answered with the caramel I’d been chewing still firmly lodged in my right cheek. “Zephyr Kontos,” I said, or tried to say. It came out more like “Zephyr Kontosh” around the caramel.

A pause on the other end. Then a voice, flat and unhurried. “This is Leon Nikolaidis. Regarding your application to the Romano family office. Mr. Romano would like to meet you today. Three o’clock. The address will be texted to you.”

I swallowed the caramel. “Today works. I’ll be there.”

Another pause. Longer this time. I could almost hear him deciding whether I was worth the oxygen this conversation was costing him. “Wear shoes,” he said finally, and hung up.