Chapter 18 · The Other Hand

Chapter 18: The Other Hand

"Play it again." Luca held the phone out between us, screen too bright for the gray light in the vault room. "Tell me that's not your voice."

It was my voice. Three nights stitched into one sentence — the shipment clears Friday — words I never said in that order, in that breath. I didn't take the phone. I didn't look at it twice.

The door behind him was dead-bolted from the hall side. I'd heard the tumblers drop when Marchetti sealed us in twenty minutes ago. No signal down here, no window, just the cabinet against the far wall and the carpet worn thin in front of it from feet that weren't mine.

"No reaction." He stepped close enough that I caught cedar and gun oil, the smell I'd stopped pretending I didn't know by heart. "Your father's people built this splice in four hours. By morning it's the lead story in three states. Candidate's daughter launders river money for her mafia husband. That's the headline, June."

I crossed my arms and dug my nails into my own skin instead of handing him a word.

"You don't get to go quiet on me now."