12. Maya #2
"I can't figure out what you want from me," I say. "You buy my tea. You use my name. You stand in your kitchen and almost touch my face, and then you tell me to go. You called this your house and you're throwing me out of it."
"I'm not throwing you out."
"You said I should go."
"I said it because if you stay, I'm going to keep asking about the phone. You're going to keep lying, and I'd rather you leave than watch you sit there shaking and pretending you're fine."
The refrigerator hums.
"It's seven degrees outside," I say.
"I know."
"My heat is broken."
"I know."
"And you're telling me to go."
"I'm telling you I can't help you if you won't let me."
Dante Voss offering help means favors and debts and the weight of owing.
"I don't need your help," I say.
"Your hand is shaking."
I look down. He's right. The tremor is back, small and visible. I close my laptop, set it on the cushion beside my phone, and fold my hands.
"You want to talk about what's in your head," I say. "Let's talk about what's in mine."
"Maya—"
"Marco drives a black Escalade. New York plates.
He's been on campus six times this academic year.
Once publicly, at Senior Night. The other five times he arrived through the east side of campus, near the fieldhouse.
No campus camera coverage on that approach.
October eleventh, November twenty-ninth, January fifteenth, late February, and two weeks ago. Never stayed more than ninety minutes."
Dante goes still.
It starts in his fingers, where they stop against the arm of the chair, then moves up through his wrists, his shoulders, his jaw. By the time his eyes go still, I keep going.
"Each visit lines up with something. Property transactions timed within days.
Donations to the athletic department. A zoning variance for a property on Wickenden Street held by a shell company called Adriatic Holdings.
Incorporated in Delaware. Registered agent shares an address with your family's law firm on Federal Hill. "
"Stop."
"And the January visit was the day before a federal subpoena was quietly quashed in the District of Rhode Island. Case number 24-CR-0871. The defendant's name is sealed. The attorney of record is from the same firm."
The refrigerator hums.
Dante is on his feet. He stood when I said Adriatic Holdings.
"How long," he says, low.
"How long, what?"
"How long have you been building a file on my family?"
"Since I was fourteen."
"Since—"
"You called me a parasite when I was fourteen." I keep my voice level. "I was standing in the hallway of Richard's house. I'd been in the house for a year, and you looked at me like I was nothing."
Silence.
His jaw stops working. His eyes go still on my face. Behind them, the math starts. Fourteen. The word he said. The girl who went upstairs afterward.
"So I went upstairs and sat on the floor of the guest room and opened a notebook.
The first entry was one line. Dante Voss.
Family has money. Source unclear. I didn't know what I was building.
I knew I needed to write something down because if I sat there and did nothing, the word would eat me alive. "
His hand comes up, presses the bridge of his nose, then drops.
"The real file started two years later, junior year, after I understood the scale of what I was looking at. The shell companies, the property patterns, the timing."
Six years of serious research. Eight years since the first line in a notebook. The pages kept filling.
When his gaze finds mine again, the anger is still there. He holds on my face the way he did in the office when his hand stopped an inch from my jaw.
"Six years," he says.
"Six years."
"You sat across from me in press rooms. You wrote about my line. You came to my house and drank my tea. And the whole time you were holding enough to put my family in a federal courtroom."
"Yes."
"And you didn't use it."
His voice is quieter. He's calculating.
"I've had plenty of reasons," I say. "You've given me plenty of reasons."
"I know."
"That's what my father does," he says. "He watches. He files. He waits." His eyes stay on mine. "The difference is he always uses it."
"I'm not your father."
"No."
The muscle along his jaw releases by a degree.
"You're not."
Silence. The refrigerator hums.
"Delete it," Dante says.
"No."
"It's my family."
"The property filings, the donations, the zoning records are all public. I read them. I noticed the pattern."
"And the federal case? The sealed defendant?"
I don't answer.
His voice gets quieter, stripped down to something bare.
"Then go."
"The public records stay public. Everything else stays in my drawer."
"Why?"
"The sourcing wasn't airtight."
His jaw works, the same way it did when he heard spam and didn't buy it.
"Goodnight, Voss."
I stand. Pick up my laptop. Unplug my charger. Pick up my phone. Grab my coat from the hook by the door.
"Your apartment has no heat."
He told me to go ten seconds ago. Now he's tracking my destination.
"I've survived worse."
I step into my boots and zip the coat over Cole's sweatshirt.
"Maya."
My hand is on the doorknob.
"The file," he says. "What you have on my family. If that got to the wrong people—the people my father works with."
A pause.
"It wouldn't just be my father. It would be Marco. It would be me."
I don't turn around. My hand tightens on the knob.
"I know," I say.
I open the door. The cold hits my face.
"Wait."
I stop half in the doorway, with cold pouring over my left side and house warmth on my right. His footsteps hit the stairs behind me, then cross the hallway above me. A drawer opens. Closes. His footsteps come back down.
He stands behind me, close enough that I feel the heat of him through the coat. His hand comes over my shoulder, holding the small black recorder.
My recorder.
The one he took from my hand in the press room seven weeks ago. His voice is on it. Mine is too. Tourist. Borrowed name. Which observer. Every syllable of the night the dynamic changed.
"Take it," he says.
I turn back toward him. His face is closer than I expected. The recorder sits in his open palm between us.
"Why now?" I ask.
"You showed me everything in your drawer." His voice is low, rough at the edges. "This was in mine."
I take the recorder.
The plastic is warm from his hand, warm enough that my fingers close too fast and tighten around the shape. It is the exact weight I remember, and my throat closes around the next breath.
I slip it into my coat pocket.
We stand in the doorway. His eyes on mine. The cold air moving between us. Neither of us steps back.
"Lock your door when you get home," he says.
"That's an order."
"That's a request."
"From you, what's the difference?"
The anger leaves first. Then the sharp, hungry restraint from the office goes with it. What's left is quieter, and my brain stalls where the category should be.
"Please," he says.
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.