Chapter 9 Dante #2
“An exemplary son.”
“You think his mom’s got him locked in the basement or something?” Jason laughs, the sound dry and humorless. “Come on, man. The fact that he was a Momma’s boy doesn’t mean shit.”
My eyes narrow to slits as I stare at the footage. Ezra’s mother goes about her day, and then a white van rolls into the frame, stopping near the house. She walks out to meet the driver.
“Pizza delivery,” he says flatly. “Damn, now I’m hungry again.”
I zoom in, and the pixels fracture into tiny mosaics, but I keep pushing closer, scrubbing the footage back and forth until I finally see it. I point to the screen, to the moment she takes the pizza box, barely open, revealing something white tucked inside.
“See that?”
He leans in, squinting. “Napkins?”
“Looks like a card to me. If he thought they were tracking his phone or intercepting his mail, this is how he’d reach her. Hidden, simple, invisible.”
Before Jason can respond, I shift the camera’s focus to the delivery guy. His face is mostly hidden under a baseball cap, but I don’t need much to feel the familiar jolt in my gut—the one that says we’re not just looking at a simple pizza delivery.
I scrub through the footage, stopping when he turns to leave.
The side of his face catches the light, just enough for me to bump the brightness, lower the contrast, take a screenshot, and drop it into the facial-recognition app.
While the program processes, I shift focus to the pizzeria logo printed on the box.
“Tramonto Pizza?” Jason reads aloud, eyebrows rising. “Is that even a real place?”
“You’re brave to ask questions after practically giving up on this footage,” I mutter, not even trying to hide the disappointment in my voice as my fingers fly over the keyboard.
“Yeah. I fucked up. I’m sorry.”
“I don’t need an apology,” I say flatly. “Just do your job. If one of us starts slacking, we lose everything. You know that.”
“That goes for you too,” he fires back, his voice edging into a challenge.
I pause, shooting him a glance over my shoulder. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You’ve been drifting,” he says. “Head in the clouds since you started spending more time on that side of our plan.”
“Yes, because I’m trying to make it convincing,” I snap. “The deeper I go, the faster they’ll start trusting me.”
He holds up a hand in surrender. “Just be careful. Don’t let it turn into something else.”
I don’t respond. My eyes stay on the screen as the pizzeria’s website loads.
It’s a real place, a local business, and everything checks out.
But my gut tells me the man in that footage doesn’t belong behind a counter serving margheritas.
More likely, the real guy is crumpled up in the back of that van.
Jason’s voice breaks through the quiet. “You want coffee while we wait?”
“Sure,” I say without looking up.
He walks away, presses the button, and the low hum of brewing coffee fills the room.
The warm, familiar aroma drifts into my nose, nudging at memories long buried, unfolding before me like a slow-motion reel.
Years of nights spent here come rushing back, only the faint glow of monitors cutting through the darkness, Jason and I hunched over cases, Lucia occasionally slipping in pastries to lighten the mood—a small tether to normalcy amid the chaos.
This room has seen it all. It has felt the surge of hope, the weight of despair, and every small victory in between.
At first, it was nothing but papers, electronics, and the bare bones of a workspace.
Over time, thanks mostly to Lucia, it gained character.
Holiday decorations appeared: garlands draped over shelves, tiny Santas and elves perched in corners, Halloween pumpkins with thick cobwebs and fake spiders that seemed ready to spring to life.
Somehow, it felt like a good temporary home, but never a real one.
Gradually, it started to annoy me. I don’t know why, but it did. And I haven’t really focused on that thought until now.
Jason sets a cup of coffee in front of me, and I catch my reflection in the dark brown liquid, distorted by the shimmer of light.
Something in me shifts every time I see it—the monotony of waiting and planning barely scratches the surface of what I feel now.
The chase, the occasional fieldwork—it all led here, but now…
now it feels like I’m waking from a long, half-dead slumber.
Emotions I haven’t allowed myself to feel come rushing in. Faces, fleeting and vivid, fill my mind. Estella—her small scowl when annoyed, the delicate smile that never quite reaches her eyes, the subtle flex of her shoulder as she tucks hair to hide the scars beneath…
I lift the cup in my hand, barely registering its heat.
The hot liquid sears my skin, painting it red, but I don’t flinch, just letting myself feel the burning pain.
Her scars keep invading my thoughts—the fine, wispy lines that trace her skin, displayed like ornaments, as if they are untouchable threads woven into her identity.
I grip the cup tighter, the heat slicing into my palm and fingers, leaving dozens of fiery tingles in its wake.
What did she feel when she got them? Are there more? What stories lie beneath those marks?
Every inch of her pulls me in with a force I can’t name. It isn’t lust, and it isn’t love. Nothing can account for it. It’s something far deeper, something primal, something buried in the darkest recesses of my soul, and only she has the power to awaken it, to drag it clawing into the light.
“Got this motherfucker,” Jason’s voice shatters the haze, pulling me back.
I snap my eyes to the screen, setting the cup on the table before glancing at my palm. A deep red imprint has formed—a scratch, a second-degree burn at most. Nothing like what Estella endured. Tiny, angry red dots spread across my skin, swelling as I stare, my hand trembling with tiny tremors.
Before Jason can ask the questions I cannot answer, I flip my palm onto my leg, grounding myself, and refocus on the screen. The hacking and facial-recognition process finished while I was lost in thought.
I scan the tabs, my eyes darting between them. “He hasn’t shown up to work,” I mutter aloud. “And this guy was supposed to be replacing him. How fucking smart.”
“Think he’s still in the country?” he asks. “Can we find him?”
“We will,” I say, my eyes lingering on the screen for a beat before shifting to the map, where pins cluster like dark bruises across the places.
And when we do, we’ll have the conversation we should have had a long time ago.
I catch my reflection in the glass — warped, fading into the blur of the room behind me. The lines of my face bleed into the dark, red veins threading through the whites of my eyes. I drag a hand through my hair, trying to tame it back into place, but it’s a losing battle.
Behind the glass, he stirs — a slow, clumsy twitch of limbs as the sedative begins to wear off. I exhale, then tilt my head to the side until a sharp crack cuts through the silence.
It took us a while to get him. No time for subtlety this round—no luring, no waiting. Jason hated every second of it. He’s always been the one with the patience, the plans, the chessboard mind.
But me? I’ve changed. Somewhere between the missions and Estella’s way of doing things, I stopped needing control all the time. Acting on impulse used to feel reckless. Now it feels… efficient. Maybe even necessary.
A groan breaks through the fog of my thoughts.
“What the fuck?” he mutters, trying to sit up, but dizziness wins, and he collapses back down, clutching his head.
“I wouldn’t rush it if I were you,” I say evenly.
His eyes snap to mine, still glazed, still lost, but gradually the realization of what is happening to him starts to wash over his mind and body.
“Scott Gordon,” I say, and he freezes. Every muscle in his body stills, breath cutting off like a broken chain.
I’ve done this a hundred times, but it never stops feeling like the first. People in this line hide behind names; some wear a dozen. When you pull the real one out, they look like they might faint and puke at the same time. It’s always a small, ugly reveal.
A crooked smile tugs at my mouth. Exhaustion coils through me, every muscle a taut wire ready to snap. I lick my cracked lips, the dryness tasting sharp and metallic, as if my own blood lingers there.
“What the fuck do you want?” Scott hisses, panic threading his voice.
I can feel the momentum of it—a snowball of fear building, rolling faster with every second.
Adrenaline pisses hot through his veins, and yet he hasn’t registered the cold of the room, or the fact that we’ve put him somewhere that makes escape an idea, not an option.
This part of the base sits underground, a basement that used to be nothing but damp concrete, spider-hung corners, and a darkness that hugged the walls like rot. Jason and Lucia never cared for it at first, since it was too bleak, too raw.
But when you start dragging people out of whatever comfortable lives they thought they had, you need a place designed for the job.
So I made one.
I scrubbed, wired, and built, forcing light into the corners where darkness had once ruled.
At the center stands a glass cage, thick and bulletproof.
It opens with a key—one only my team and I possess.
Outside, a real key must be inserted into the lock, giving complete control to anyone holding it.
Inside, a small, coin-like magnetic turn mechanism lies hidden, mine alone to command, since nobody knows I have the key.
A single lamp hangs from the ceiling, bright and naked, casting harsh clarity over every surface. The square cage is suffocating by design: no corners to disappear into, no shadows to manipulate, no escape from the gaze of the light. Isolation is the weapon here, hopelessness its only language.