“I’ll keep that in mind.”
“Good man.” He chucks his chin toward the door. A dismissal.
I walk out.
I’m in the elevator before I process it. No cameras here—I verified that two years ago and have tracked it since. I stand in it and breathe and run through what just happened.
A dressing down, of sorts. That’s the message. Six men in a room, twelve minutes of basically nothing. But it wasn’t nothing.
The dressing down was not the message.
The message wasYes, I’m watching you. Yes, I know your secrets. I’m choosing not to act today, and I want you to know that you know the choice is mine. I will act at my leisure.
I have to get Lena and Opal out of Marco’s reach. Now.
Lena is in the kitchen when I get home. Opal is at the counter with her crayons, tongue out in concentration, narrating something about her drawing under her breath.
I stand in the doorway for a moment and take in the ordinary scene. The afternoon light on Lena’s hair, the smell of something on the stove, the low continuous hum of a household that has become one.
I hate to shatter the calm, but there’s no other choice. “We need to move. Temporarily. A secondary location I keep for situations like this. It’s clean, secure?—”
Lena turns and looks at me. “No.”
“There’s trouble?—”
“No.” She doesn’t break eye contact with me as she says, “Opal, sweetie, I need you to go to your room and close the door.”
“But I just got the eyes even?—”
“Now.”
Opal’s eyes widen, but she gathers her things. On her way out of the kitchen, she says to me, “Make her pasta.”
“Why?”
“It made me feel better. It’ll make her feel better.” She walks out in a hurry.
When I hear the door close, I lay it out. “The penthouse—the people in it—have become visible to the wrong people. The secondary location is clean, minimal exposure. Weeks at most.” After that, we move. But I don’t mention that part yet.
Lena blows out a hard breath. “Opal has been stable for months. She has school she loves, a best friend, a routine. I promised her safe and stable and this is the first time she’s had it, and I’m not pulling it out from under her. Not to mention that I just started at the firm, and I’m going back to college. I can’t go disappearing now?—”
“I have money. That’s not a problem.”
“That’s not the point, Dario. And you control everything in this building. How is somewhere else safer?”
I look at her face. She won’t budge on this. Lena has given in to everything else I wanted. This is the first time she’s really putting her feet down about anything.
Fuck. “Fine. We stay. But I’m doing some renovations, and I’ll need you to be flexible about it.”
“Whatever you think you need to do.”
“Except relocation?”
“Yes.”
This woman is impossible.
I spend the next two hours reinforcing every security measure I can reach. Sensors, locks, monitoring, laser cam. If my main system goes dark—as it will if someone cuts the building power—the secondary stays up on its own battery. Every layer I can add without making the penthouse feel like a fortress to a child who still puts drawings on our refrigerator.
