Please.
I've watched Dante Voss operate for six years. He commands. He positions. He arranges rooms around himself before he enters them. I have never once heard him ask instead of take, and now the word is here in the doorway with the cold pressing against my back and the heat of him still too close.
I step outside. The door closes behind me.
The walk back to my apartment takes twelve minutes. I walk fast. The cold bites through the coat, through the sweatshirt underneath. Cole's sweatshirt, still on my body. My breath trails white. The recorder in my pocket presses against my hip with every stride.
My apartment building appears at the end of the block. Inside my apartment, I lock the door. Check the windows. Slide the chain. I pull out my phone. The call log shows the incoming call. Unknown number. 413. Duration six seconds. I delete it.
I sit on the edge of the bed and pull the pocket notebook from my bag, then the pen from the inside pocket.
Third contact. 413. 10:47 PM. Duration: 6 seconds. Answered. Silence. Location: Elm House. D.V. present. Tremor visible. Identified by D.V. Cover story failed.
I stare at the entry. Add below it.
D.V. confrontation re: presence in house. Deployed Voss family file. Dates, patterns, shell companies, sealed federal case. D.V. response: stood at "Adriatic Holdings." Asked "how long." Compared methodology to Salvatore's. Said "You're not." Returned recorder (7 weeks held). Said "please" (first use, unprompted).
I close the notebook and slide the pen back into my bag.
Cole will ask about tonight.
I'll say the heat was out, I used the house, and I came home. All of it will be true. It will leave out almost everything that happened.
He'll read my face the way he reads every room. He'll find the gap, and I'll watch him decide not to push because Cole always knows when the gap is load-bearing.
My hands are steady. The 413 call made them shake. The file deployment didn't. The recorder sits on the nightstand beside my phone. I put on two more layers, get under every blanket I own, and lie in the dark.
My phone lights up. Dante. Two words.
Lock your door.
I already did.
He said please in the doorway, and he's still checking.
I get up. The door is already locked. I check it anyway.
Back in bed, I lie in the dark with the recorder on the nightstand and Cole's sweatshirt still on my body.
The apartment feels like seven degrees, and the shame should be here by now.
It isn't.
Chapter 13
Dante
Ihaven't slept.
I washed the mug she left at midnight, dried it, and put it back in the cabinet next to the box of Barry's. Then I stood at the counter for ten minutes with my hands braced on the edge, the kitchen dark around me and the taste of tea still caught in the back of my throat.
The Wickenden Street property. I know that address. The permits on Federal Hill. I know that firm. She traced a chain she built from public records, and every link she named connects to infrastructure Marco manages for my father. The Wickenden property is one of Luca's messes, formalized through a shell company after my cousin turned a simple acquisition into a situation that required lawyers. She found the cleanup. She mapped the pattern from the residue outward, from thebottom up. The transfers, addresses, and filings gave her enough without the names on top.
Since she was fourteen.
I shower. The water is too hot, and I let it burn.
Cole comes down at seven. Practice isn't until ten. My coffee is already in my hand. He pours his with the easy grace of a man who slept eight hours.
