That's new.
"It's done," I say. "Bellevue is covered. Four at the ER entrance, two on the structure, and one embedded inside."
She doesn't turn around.
"I know," she says. "I saw."
Something in her voice stops me.
She turns. The expression on her face isn't the fury of a woman who disagrees with a decision. It's the expression of a woman who has just learned that the ground beneath her is not what she thought.
"You had footage," she says. "From the ambulance bay. The night Tessaro died."
I go very still.
"I found it when you stepped out." She looks at the laptop, then back at me. "You watched me. Before you ever walked into that trauma bay. Before you approached me in the stairwell. You already knew exactly what happened — you saw him pass me the drive, you saw my face, and you had footage of me doing my job on the worst night of my life."
Her voice is completely controlled. That's how I know it's bad.
"And you never told me."
"Serafina—"
"How long have you been watching me?" Not a shout. Quieter than that. The kind of question that carries weight. "Before that night? After? Did you pull my shifts, my schedule, my?—"
"The footage came from the hospital's own system," I interrupt. "Standard security sweep after Tessaro went down. I pulled it once, that night, to confirm the drive transfer. That's all."
"That's all." She repeats it like she's testing the structural integrity. "You watched me resuscitate a dying man. You watched him press something into my pocket. You watched my face when I realized what it was." Her jaw is set. "And then you showed up in my stairwell and let me think you were reacting to information in real time. You already knew everything."
"I knew about the drive. I didn't know you."
"You had a head start I didn't consent to." Her eyes find mine and hold there. "That's not a small thing, Luca. That's not a protocol decision or a security call. That's you deciding you had the right to watch me before I had any say in whether you were in my life at all."
The words land clean and true. I don't have a defense against them because she's right.
"Yes," I say.
She blinks, like she expected me to argue.
"I made a judgment call in a situation with no clean options," I say. "I needed to know if the drive had been transferred and to whom. The footage confirmed it. I used it, and I moved." I hold her gaze. "I should have told you. From the first night. You deserved to know I'd seen it and I chose not to tell you, and that was wrong."
The kitchen is very quiet.
She looks at me for a long time. Reading me the way she reads everything — methodical, thorough, looking for what I'm not showing.
"The bargain," she says finally.
"Full transparency. From this moment. Anything you want to know."
"The footage. Is it still accessible?"
"I'll have Niko pull it and send it to you tonight. Every frame. Delete it after if you want. That's your call."
Another long silence.
Then she crosses to me.
I don't move. I let her come — let her stop close enough that I can see the calculation still running in her eyes, the war between fury and something else that she hasn't decided what to do with yet.
