Chapter 13 The Poisoned Handshake
The Poisoned Handshake
The clinic backroom smelled like antiseptic and old metal, but it was the blood that made Valentina look pale - too pale for someone who’d argued her way out of an escort and insisted she could handle the world.
Her fingers were wrapped around the routing authorization like it was the only solid thing in the room.
When the notary’s face had hit the floor back there, her body had gone rigid first, then shaken - small, controlled tremors she tried to hide by shifting her weight and swallowing hard.
Enzo stood close enough to catch her if the floor betrayed her.
Close enough that her breath warmed his knuckles when she leaned against the counter.
He didn’t touch her at first. He’d learned what she hated: pity dressed up as protection.
He could feel the impulse to do it anyway, to anchor her with his hands and his certainty.
He forced it down and kept his voice low.
“Look at me,” he said. “Not the paper. Me.”
Valentina’s gaze snapped to his, dark eyes too bright with anger that had nowhere to go. “He died with my documents in his hands.”
“He died with someone else’s poison in his system,” Enzo corrected, and he hated that it came out like command. He softened it with the next words. “We’re going to give you the answer you want. But right now, you’re shaking.”
“I’m not shaking.”
“You are.” He nodded at her grip. “Unclench.”
Her jaw flexed. For a heartbeat, she looked like she might bite back with more stubbornness - then the sight of the sealed pact routing sheet in her fist seemed to turn her into something brittle. She loosened her fingers, slowly, like she was afraid the paper would cut her.
Enzo took it from her without rushing, turning it so the printed routing authorization faced the light. The paper was thick, official, the kind of thing that could ruin a man’s life with a stamp and a signature. The ink looked fresh. Too fresh.
He glanced toward the metal tray where a sterile kit had been opened - swabs in paper sleeves, gloves laid out with deliberate order.
The clinic owner - some cousin of a cousin who’d survived by staying useful and quiet - had stepped out at Enzo’s request. The backroom was left to them and the hum of refrigeration units.
Valentina watched him with a fierce stillness. “You’re stalling.”
“No,” he said, and finally put his hand over hers, not on the paper. On her palm. Heat and pulse, her skin warm despite the cold air. “I’m keeping you alive long enough to solve this.”
Her lashes fluttered. For a second, her focus slid toward his hand, toward the contact she hadn’t asked for and couldn’t deny she needed. Then her pride snapped it back into place.
“I don’t need you to keep me alive.”
Enzo’s mouth tightened. “You need me to keep you from becoming a target because you’re too angry to think.”
The words did exactly what he intended: they landed. Valentina’s mouth opened, then closed. She looked away, toward the stainless-steel sink where someone had washed instruments earlier, leaving a faint chemical scent clinging to the drain.
Enzo pulled on gloves and picked up the first swab from the tray.
He didn’t announce what he was doing. He moved like a man who’d spent his life in rooms where people paid for silence - careful, precise, no wasted motion.
He leaned in, studying the swab sleeves, the labels, the faint residue on the plastic that clung to the grooves.
“You said it was poison,” Valentina said, voice lower now. “You said it before we even knew.”
“I said it because the notary’s hands were stained on the inside,” Enzo replied. “A man bleeds on the outside. Poison bleeds in different ways.”
Valentina’s throat bobbed. “And you didn’t tell me what you smelled.”
He paused. “Because you were focused on the folder. On Greco. On the chain-of-custody.”
“And I’m not focused on it now?” she challenged, but there was strain under it.
Enzo set the swab into the analysis holder with a soft click. “Now you’re focused on the fact that someone can reach into your world and leave you holding paper while they take people off the board.”
Valentina flinched at the phrasing - off the board. Like the notary had been less human than a piece on a table. Enzo hated the effect of his own words. But he couldn’t let her drift into grief. Grief would slow her. Slow meant vulnerable.
He looked up. “Tell me what you remember about his confession.”
Her eyes sharpened. “You want the timeline.”
“I want the method.” Enzo’s fingers tightened around the swab holder for half a second, then relaxed. “The poison isn’t random. It’s delivered.”
Valentina’s gaze moved to the tray, to the sealed swabs and the clean instruments that suddenly felt like props in a play she didn’t want to star in. “He said Donato Greco’s intermediary made him swear. That he was only a notary. That he didn’t know what he was signing.”
“And did he mention how it happened?” Enzo asked.
Valentina’s lips pressed together. “Not directly. He was… scared. He kept looking at his hands as if he didn’t recognize them.”
Enzo nodded once, absorbing that like a clue rather than a memory. “Fear makes people notice patterns. Even when they don’t want to.”
He reached for the second swab - this one marked with a small, careful code.
He’d asked for swabs from the notary’s entry points: fingertips, the underside of the tongue, the faint residue around the wound he’d taken when Enzo intercepted the attacker in the corridor.
The clinic tech had complied. Maybe because Enzo paid.
Maybe because the tech recognized what kind of trouble walked in wearing Enzo’s kind of authority.
Valentina leaned closer despite herself. “You’re checking the delivery.”
“I’m checking the signature,” Enzo said. “Poison has habits. It wants specific conditions.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Like a person.”
“Exactly like a person.” He turned his attention back to the analysis kit. The backroom’s light was too white, too honest. It made everything look worse: the gloves, the swabs, the smear of dried blood in a corner of the tray that wouldn’t be cleaned out no matter how many times someone wiped.
Enzo worked in silence for long enough that her impatience tried to rise again. He felt it in her shifting. In the way her knee bounced once, twice, like her body wanted to escape the room.
“Stop looking like that,” Valentina said at last.
“Like what?”
“Like you’re already ahead of me,” she snapped. “Like you can see the end of this.”
Enzo’s throat tightened. He didn’t like being cornered. But she’d been cornered first - by a dead notary, by a forged line, by the knowledge that someone had tampered with the sealed pact with surgical patience.
“I’m not ahead,” he said. “I’m behind, too. I’m just not letting it show.”
Valentina’s gaze softened for a fraction of a second, then hardened again. “Then let me help.”
Enzo looked at her hands - empty now, her fingers curled around nothing. “Help by staying focused.”
“Enzo - ”
“No.” He cut it off gently, because if he pushed her too hard, she’d go to war with him instead of with the conspiracy. “Answer me. When the notary died, did he touch anyone? Did he shake hands? Did he hold anything with both palms?”
Valentina’s brow furrowed. “He… he was alone when I found him.”
“Alone in the room,” Enzo corrected. “But not alone in the moment. People poison you while they’re close enough to be polite.”
Valentina’s eyes flicked away. “There was a waiter earlier.”
Enzo’s stomach tightened. “The one who delivered the message?”
“Not the same,” she said quickly. “This one - he brought coffee. He kept calling the notary ‘sir.’ He hovered like he was waiting for permission to leave.”
Enzo’s mind caught on the detail like a hook. “Coffee.”
Valentina nodded once. “He offered it. The notary took it. Then his expression changed. Like he’d bitten into something bitter and couldn’t understand why.”
Enzo set down the swab and leaned back against the counter, forcing himself to slow. If he jumped to conclusions, he’d miss the truth. Poison delivery methods were rarely singular. Sometimes it was a gesture. Sometimes it was an object. Sometimes it was a handshake disguised as courtesy.
He studied the residue under the analysis light.
It shimmered faintly when it was exposed - an oily sheen that shouldn’t have been there.
Enzo’s pulse ticked up. He’d seen that kind of sheen before.
It had been part of a different nightmare, one that had tried to take The Shadows by making men drop like puppets.
He stared at it until Valentina’s voice cut through his concentration again.
“What are you thinking?” she demanded. “Don’t shut down on me.”
Enzo looked up. “I’m thinking about a technique.”
Her eyes sharpened. “From where?”
“From older work,” he said. “The kind of pattern you only learn after you’ve watched people die the same way twice.”
Valentina’s mouth tightened. “Say it.”
Enzo picked up a fresh swab, then stopped.
He could feel the internal conflict in him like a bruise: he wanted to tell her everything, to let her share the weight.
But he also knew that information could become leverage in hands that didn’t deserve it.
If the mastermind was watching, if they’d seeded the poison delivery method to be recognized, then every word Enzo spoke might be a signal.
Still - she wasn’t a client. She wasn’t a bystander. She was the person whose legal documents could destroy empires. She deserved the truth, even if it hurt.
“It resembles the handshake ritual,” Enzo said.
Valentina went still. “What ritual.”
Enzo didn’t answer immediately. He watched her face for reactions - not the ones she controlled, but the ones that slipped through. Her eyes didn’t widen. They didn’t roll. Her pupils tightened like she’d just stepped into cold water.
“You know it,” Enzo said.
“I know of it,” she corrected. “I thought it was a rumor.”
“Rumors don’t leave residue like that,” he said.