"Enzo wants you at midnight,”Luca announces from the doorway, watching me carefully.
"I know. I'm not going."
To his credit, Luca doesn't waste time arguing the obvious.
He goes straight to no — quiet, final, the voice he uses when he's already decided and expects the room to agree — and I let him finish.
Then I lay out my counter-plan with the same precision I use when I tell a resident their diagnosis is wrong.
The Fixer wants leverage. After six weeks of surveillance, he still hasn't moved directly, which means he needs me functional, compliant, or compromised — not dead. That's an opening. Wire me up, put me where he'd expect me, give him the chance to make contact. When he does, we get his voice on record, hand it to the federal channel with Niko's payment chain, and the whole thing detonates publicly in a way even Enzo can't manage.
Luca listens.
His expression does not change once.
"No."
"It's the cleanest?—"
"No."
"If you'd just?—"
"Serafina." Warning. "No."
I look at him. He looks at me. The air between us has that charge it gets — two people, each completely certain they're right and with no intention of yielding.
"Then I'll do it without you."
A muscle ticks in his jaw. "You will not?—"
"East wing breaker cuts the card reader at the service exit." Calm. "I've had three days to map the building. I can be outside in four minutes flat, and I'll be halfway to Bellevue before your team resets." I hold his gaze. "I'm not bluffing. I've run the scenario. It works."
Dangerous silence.
"You'd actually walk out?"
"I would walk out because the alternative is to sit here while your uncle and my father negotiate my future over scotch. I will burn this city down before I let that happen." I step toward him. "You want control? Fine. Give me a wire. Give me guards I can't see, exit routes mapped to the inch, fifteen-minute check-ins. Give me the infrastructure. But give it to me as a partner, Luca — not as a prisoner with better security protocols."
His jaw is tight enough to cut glass.
He turns away. Walks to the window. Stands there with his hands in his pockets.
I watch his shoulders and think of the boy who grew up with brothers and a rotating nanny and no mother, who learned that control was the only thing that kept the world from taking everything — and I viscerally understand the cost to him of what he does next.
He turns around.
"Wire. Two men inside, three outside. Exit routes mapped before you move. Fifteen-minute check-ins, no exceptions. You make contact, you get audio, you walk — you don't push for more, you don't improvise, you don't go off-script for any reason." He crosses back to me. Stops close. "And if I give you this and something goes wrong—" His voice drops below language. "I'll kill every last one of them and I won't lose a minute of sleep over it. There will be nothing left of the people responsible. You understand me? Nothing."
My pulse is doing things it has no business doing.
"That's surprisingly reasonable."
"Don't."
"I'm just saying?—"
"Serafina." His hand comes up. Knuckles brush my jaw — barely touching, the ghost of contact. "This isn't me giving you permission. This is me accepting that you'll go regardless, and choosing to make sure you come back." His eyes find mine and hold. Dark and certain, and beneath it all, fear. Real fear. The kind he'll never name. "Come back."
