My fingers move on instinct. Three keystrokes. The command I programmed years ago for this exact moment. My screens flicker once as the upload initiates. Everything important pushed to an encrypted cloud server. Then the local drives begin their wipe cycle. Thirty seconds and there will be nothing left but hardware.
“What are you doing?”
“Making sure no one else gets what I just promised to you.” I hold his stare. “You want my intel? It lives in my head now. Not on those drives.”
His chin dips. A fraction. Like he’d picked up a weapon and found it loaded.
I stare at his back as he turns away. At the economy of his movement, the way he fills space like he was born to occupy it.
He stops in the doorway. Turns back. His gaze finds mine in the blue glow of my dying screens.
“Are you coming?”
We both know I don’t have a choice. His weight is forward, not blocking the exit. Waiting. Like my answer matters even though it doesn’t.
I held my ground. Didn’t beg. Offered a deal instead of pleading for my life. Maybe he noticed. Maybe that’s why I’m still breathing.
Fuck.
I cross the room on legs that can barely hold me. Before I go, I rip Sofia’s photo off the wall and shove it into my hoodie pocket.
The cold coffee on my desk. The brownie box I can’t bring myself to throw away. The monitors flickering as the wipe cycle finishes its work.
I leave all of it. But not her. Never her.
I step over the splintered remains of my door and face Lorenzo Santoro, who’s waiting in the hallway with the patience of someone who knows exactly how this ends.
“If this is a trap,” I say, “if you’re just taking me somewhere quiet to put a bullet in my head, I want to know now.”
“Then you’ll be dead and it won’t matter.”
He doesn’t look back.
“Move.”
He starts walking, his footsteps silent on the worn carpet. I follow because Sofia is still out there. Because the alternative is a bullet, and I’m not done yet.
The SUV smells like leather and something darker. I climb in and press my forehead against the cool glass, trying to remember how to breathe.
Lorenzo sits across from me in the darkness, silent as a grave. His hands rest on his thighs. Scarred and motionless. He doesn’t fidget. Doesn’t shift.
I catch his reflection in the window glass. He’s watching me. Not the road, not his phone. Me. When I turn my head, his gaze is already elsewhere.
My skin won’t stop prickling.
Sofia. The Benedettis. The deal. I have information Lorenzo Santoro needs. That makes me valuable. That keeps me breathing until I can use it.
The SUV turns onto a main road, heading toward the compound and whatever waits for me there.
Ghost is dead.
“How far?” My voice sounds thin in the dark cabin.
He doesn’t look at me. “Twenty minutes.”
Twenty minutes to calculate if I just saved my own life or ended it. My eyes shut. I think of the one fraction of a second when I didn’t flinch, and he blinked. Like I’d surprised him. Like that hadn’t happened in a long time.
I press my forehead harder against the glass and wait to find out what kind of monster I’ve bargained with.
