She blinks. Then she makes a sound that is almost — almost — a laugh, shakes her head, and walks away.
I follow.
She's quieter after that.Not shut down — Serafina doesn't shut down. She processes, and I'm learning the difference. She works at the desk with a focus that's slightly too deliberate, the focus of a woman turning something over in her mind while her hands do something else. She pulls donor records, cross-references names against the drive, asks sharp questions, and takes sharper notes. But every so often, she goes still for a half-second — barely perceptible —, and I know she's back in that elevator.
Good. I meant every word.
Niko joins us remotely from the brownstone. I chase payment chains, shell accounts, anything that ties Hale to the Fixer. We work in near silence, each of us pulling a different thread from the same ugly knot.
At one point, Niko glances between us — me at the window, her at the desk — and says, entirely to his screen, "You know, I looked you both up. Same age. Somehow, the two most stubborn people I’ve ever worked with ended up born in the same year." He takes a sip of his energy drink. "Just an observation."
Serafina doesn't look up. "Nobody asked, Niko." A pause. "But for the record, I'm the more stubborn one."
Then: "Wait — who's older?"
Niko pulls up something without missing a beat. "He's March. You're June. He's got three months on you."
"So he's been insufferable longer." She nods slowly. "That explains a lot."
I say nothing. But the corner of my mouth moves, and Niko sees it, and has the good sense to keep typing.
She leans over the desk to reach a file and her hair falls forward and I look away before my brain finishes the thought. She asks Niko a question and he answers and she laughs — short, genuine, the one she doesn't perform — and I feel it low in my stomach like a structural problem I've been ignoring.
She's still thinking about what I said in the elevator. I can tell by the way she isn't looking at me.
I'm still thinking about it too. Not because I regret it. I don't. Because I meant it, and meaning things about Serafina Virelli has stopped feeling like a strategy and started feeling like something I can't walk back from.
"Boss."Caruso's voice in my earpiece, low and urgent. "Movement in the lobby. Three men, no appointments, asking for you by name. They're not ours."
I'm already moving. "Lockdown thirty-four. Nobody in or out." I look at Serafina. "We need to move. Now."
She doesn't ask questions. She stands, grabs the drive, and follows me to the stairwell.
We make it to the thirty-second floor before Caruso's voice cuts back in. "Lobby's compromised. They've got someone on the elevator bank."
"Stairs?"
"Two men heading up from the garage. Thirty seconds."
I pull Serafina into the corridor, running through the floor plan. Service areas, maintenance access, utility rooms. End of the hall — unmarked door. Security closet. Cameras, junction boxes, and cleaning supplies. No windows. One entry point I can control.
I get her inside and pull the door shut.
Darkness.Industrial cleaner and electrical equipment, and beneath it — her. Warm skin and the scent of clean soap, the scent I've apparently memorized without permission. We're pressed together by necessity, my back against the door, her body against mine, both of us breathing carefully.
Through the door, footsteps. Passing. Fading.
Neither of us moves.
"This is becoming a pattern," she whispers.
"Small spaces?"
"You’re pressing me against things."
"You're not pressed against anything. I am."
A pause. "Semantics."
