Chapter 37 · The Slush Carbon

"Don't touch it with your bare thumbs," I snapped. "Grease eats old carbon."

Gia jerked her hands back like the envelope was wired to blow.

It sat on the scarred mahogany between us, bathed in the sour yellow cut of the banker's lamp. Small, thick, and still damp from Danny's boot lining. The red wax seal on the crease was cracked straight down the spine. Victor Sable's personal mark—the one he stamped on hits before he started wearing bespoke three-piece suits.

Twelve years in a safe, and it smelled like sweat and river rot.

"Nobody cuts open Victor's red wax," Danny croaked from the cot in the corner. He had an army blanket bunched around his neck, black soot still crusted in the folds of his ears. "That's why I took it. Swiped it right out of his blotter. Figured if your hitters pulled me over, they'd spot the crest and back off."

"You crammed a death warrant inside a dead Don's mail," I said, my teeth clicking.

"Got me through three checkpoints, didn't it?"

"You spent eleven weeks rotting in a crawlspace, Danny!"

"I'm breathing, Mara!"

I wanted to haul off and slap him.