Chapter 14 · One Second From Sealing

Chapter 14: One Second From Sealing

"Tell her to beg, Crowe. It'll make the video better."

Dante Severo says it without looking at me, like I'm a prop he's already decided how to light. He's got a knife turned flat against Luca's palm, point resting in the center like he's about to carve a signature instead of ask for one.

The warehouse vault smells like river rot and gun oil. Cold enough that my breath shows. Somewhere behind Dante, a man I don't know holds a tablet at chest height, screen glowing, numbers running down in red. 04:58. 04:57.

"What's the clock for," Luca says. Flat. Not a question, more like he's cataloguing the insult.

"Your wife's audition tape." Dante smiles with half his mouth. "Full cut, spliced cut, doesn't matter which plays first. At zero it goes to every phone with a Family number in it. Your crew. Her father's donors. The Commission chat nobody's supposed to know I'm on."

My stomach drops through the concrete.

"Unless," Dante says, and turns the knife so the light runs along it, "your husband signs over the river route. In blood. Old-school. I like old-school.