13. Clara
Chapter 13
Clara
I stare at the ceiling for the third morning in a row, after another near-sleepless night. Everything feels unsettled, like an earthquake has upended the foundation below me, rolling and shaking the ground with endless aftershocks.
The first morning after my discovery, I planned to make my way back to that hidden room and figure out what the ever loving fuck is happening, only to find Deniz sitting at the dinner table, a cup of tea hot and waiting for me at the opposite end.
“I’m working from home today,” he said with a calm smile. I stopped, staring at him like he’d grown another head. He’d laughed, rolled his eyes, and taken a sip from my tea before replacing it on its coaster.
Proving it wasn’t poisoned.
There’s no sense in pretending he hasn’t gained the upper hand between us, but I’ll be damned if I let a man send me cowering back into a borrowed room. So I sat across from him and drank my scalding English breakfast to the last drop, while we stared each other down like one of us would draw a weapon with the slightest hint of danger.
It’s been like this every day. Each passing moment has been laden with so much tension, layered with emotions I can barely understand, much less name. We circle each other like lions fighting over a fresh kill.
And I can’t even go home. Word would get back to my family that I’m not sharing a residence with my fiancé, who I promised I was building a relationship based on trust with. Even a tiny slip up would lead the naturally paranoid Costa clan to sniff out a lie. And they’d find it, I’m certain of it.
I don’t even really feel like I can tell Emily. As pissed as I am that she missed this, I can’t exactly blame her. I’ve been living here for weeks and haven’t noticed a thing. If I tell her, she’ll likely see this for the emergency it is, and technically I’m not yet her matriarch. Taking this to my mother would be the responsible thing to do; in fact, not doing so might be considered treason.
Logically, I know that I should be the one to tell her, admit what a colossal mistake I made, and hope that three decades of a perfect record will buy me some forgiveness. But when I think about it, standing in front of her and telling her I let someone dangerous into our ranks, even climbed into his bed, I’m overcome with shame and fear. I would lose everything. She had threatened it before, and I’m certain she wasn’t bluffing.
The only possible option is to wait. Bide my time, figure out why Deniz was stalking me, and make it to the altar. Then I can quietly kill him and rule as a widow.
Knowing I have to wait to marry him until after Gwen and Charlie’s ceremony is a barrier I’m not thrilled with. But at least I have a timeline, a chessboard I can play on. Even without Emily, I can figure out what Deniz wants out of me and my family. He needs me alive, otherwise he would have killed me by now, and I’ll keep that advantage as long as I can.
Like I’ve done each morning since my surprise discovery, I examine every corner of my room, searching behind the art on the wall, tracing the seams of the plush headboard, hunting for cameras. I haven’t been able to find anything, and while I wish that made me feel better, I know a man who's watched me for this long wouldn’t give up just because I’m under his roof. I haven’t been able to make it back into his little surveillance bunker, not with him working from home. Neither of us has left this apartment in three days, but I know he has to go in for a meeting today. It’s my first chance to do real research.
When I’m satisfied momentarily that there are no cameras in my room, I pick up my phone and stare at the clock. Deniz should be leaving soon. I tiptoe to the door, my bare feet silent against the carpet, and listen for the sounds of him roaming around the house.
There’s a jingle of keys, a few knocks that could be cabinets closing. A beat or two of silence that makes me sweat, and then the telltale opening of the elevator doors. After they close, I count to one hundred, trying to make relatively certain that the elevator won’t be returning.
I open the door, feeling paranoid as I scan the area for cameras. I pad over to the bathroom, intent on showering off my exhaustion. But when I look out the window, the pool catches my eye.
I have one singular bathing suit here—a skimpy thing with the tags still attached that I’m pretty sure Emily bought me—but I tear off the tags and slip it on before I walk out into the living room.
There is no obvious surveillance equipment here, even lust-drunk Clara would have noticed that on the first night. But as I survey the room, it’s obvious where cameras could be hiding. The large television on the far wall likely has an embedded camera. There are surround sound speakers in the corners of the room, innocuous enough for anyone but Deniz.
I hate to admit it, but I truly am afraid. There was something so calm about him in that room. It unnerved me. For the first time, I didn’t have the upper hand in an interaction. And the hours upon hours of hunting and research I’ve done over the past two days have resulted in no clues as to his motivations.
But I force myself to pretend I’m unperturbed. I wave at the television before making my way to the balcony. The glass accordion doors fold open, and the sunrise warms my skin as it evaporates the evening dew from the Adirondack chairs. There’s an obvious camera affixed to the corner of the balcony, but no one would question a basic outdoor security system. I stare directly into its lens before I dive into the pool.
My hair will hate me for this, but the frigid water feels like a needed slap in the face. My skin tingles and blood rushes away from my fingertips and toes, trying to preserve my vital organs from the onslaught of cold.
It’s like the temperature and the lack of oxygen work together to clarify my thoughts. I swim underwater for two laps, letting the burn in my chest simmer for ninety seconds. One hundred. One hundred ten.
At one hundred thirteen I cave, breaking through the surface of the water to grip the concrete edge. I gasp for breath, the painful twinge in my lungs matching the sting on my skin. Today is warmer than the last few weeks have been, but a cool breeze still bites. I rest my arms against the ledge, obsessing over every detail I’ve shared with Deniz.
Clearly, he’s some sort of spy. The best option is that he works for some rival family or well-off criminal who wants to eliminate the threat The Syndicate poses to their operations. Worst case, he’s somehow involved with Konstantin and his team.
There are a lot of options between those two, but the possibility that Deniz had a hand in my mother’s attack chills me far more than this water ever could. We know Konstantin's weapons distribution ring has assets in our organization, and that a spy infiltrated Gia’s team at the highest levels. But to think he could have planted someone in my own bed makes me nauseous.
I drop back under the surface, pushing off the wall and starting my laps again. It can’t be possible. If there was a connection between Konstantin and Deniz or his family, Emily or I would have found it. For all our differences, Konstantin's operations share one thing in common with The Syndicate of Fate—we don’t trust anyone other than family with our most important missions.
After a few more laps, I swim to the edge of the pool and pull myself out of the water, letting myself drip dry in the sun as I move tiny pieces in my mind. Knowing if Deniz has any connection to Konstantin has to be my first priority. Anything less than that, I can handle on my own.
Which means I need to get back into that surveillance room.
I grab a towel and dry off, muttering to myself as I solidify my plan. I quickly shower and treat my hair, wrapping it in a t-shirt and throwing on the first clothes I can find. I feel like I’m having an out-of-body experience until I’m standing in the pantry once again.
I know he’s watching. Now that I’m prepared, I notice the way my skin prickles, like it did in that bar. I ignore it, pushing the pantry door inward and stepping inside. I make my way down the long, dark hallway, no light in my hand this time, until I get to the next door.
If he wanted to keep me out, he would have locked it from the inside. He obviously has another entrance through his room. But the handle turns easily, and I walk in to find the computers already on, dozens of short clips of me playing repeatedly on the screens.
Coming here gives him something too. Whatever I find here, he’ll know I’ve seen it. In this room, there’s no way to hide from each other.
No secrets. No lies.
I sit in the chair and navigate to the same folder I found before, the one filled to the brim with me . I need to determine when the earliest video was taken so I can establish the timeline of when he was hired to stalk me.
I click through the files, opening and closing them and sorting them within the folder by date, and I can’t stop asking myself why . Being stalked, however unsettling, is a hazard of my occupation; Deniz isn’t the first to attempt it. Finding a way to infiltrate into my life could be a logical step toward his goals, especially if he was tasked with uncovering the inner operations of The Syndicate.
The fact that he hasn’t killed me doesn’t make sense.
As soon as I entered this room, he should have killed me or fled with all the data he has gathered so far. Or transmitted that data to his employer and ended his own life. There’s no logic in letting me live, in having me stay in his home.
Unless he’s not working for anyone but himself , I think as I find a video from last November, over a year ago now. It’s the earliest one I’ve seen so far. I’m as disheveled as I’ve ever been in public, my sunken eyes and untamed hair visible even through the distance of whatever security camera filmed me. I’m at the airport in Rome, sitting in a private lounge with my head in my hands. I think this was the first day I left Bari after my mother was transferred from Istanbul.
I backtrack through the video, realizing there’s a lot more footage than I expected. Most of these clips are a few seconds long, especially the ones of me in public. They catch me walking by an ATM or traffic camera in passing. But in this one, there’s almost eight minutes of video that doesn’t include me at all. The image jumps from angle to angle throughout Fiumicino, like the operator is looking for something.
Until it finds me. It lingers on me, watching as I breathe deeply and struggle to keep my composure. I had been holding my mother’s hand in that hospital bed for months, leaving only to brief the council and send Charlie on impossible missions. Which means I had been far away from any surveillance systems, barely in public at all.
This is the first time he found me. So it’s been over a year.
The timing doesn’t make me feel any fucking better. If Konstantin was pissed that his mission to kill our matriarch failed, he might have sent an asset to stalk the next best thing.
None of the information Emily sent me connected Deniz to Konstantin, except for the fact that he was born in the country that my mother was attacked in. But it had been years since Deniz had been back to Türkiye. His parents retired to Napa, living quiet, innocuous lives, and his brother was born, raised, and buried in this very county. While Deniz’s closest friends had connections in Eastern Europe, the Levant, and Southwest Asia, nothing raised any red flags.
So I keep digging, desperate to know if there’s any connection to Konstantin. I navigate away from the file filled with videos and images of me, and search through the thousands upon thousands of other folders. While Deniz seems to keep some critical files from his day job here, the vast majority of information is related to my family and our operations.
Most of it is from over a year ago. Emily in a lot of airports, Charlie passing through toll bridges on I-95. My aunts and uncle even make appearances briefly.
There are no images of my parents at all, which is odd for someone theoretically hired after an attack on my mother’s life. It seems unlikely that Konstantin would ignore my mother, especially seeing as she foiled his attempt, but she’s also been hidden away at home recovering. Maybe he has someone other than Deniz hired to trace her.
I find one singular image of Bea. It’s a still, her face barely in the frame, the resolution of the image incredibly low. I can’t even tell what continent this was taken on.
I shift in my seat, uncomfortable with the lack of information about Bea here. I’ve put off confronting her about the mole in her mother’s arm of our enterprise, mostly because Charlie has asked me to. I’d like to believe that she couldn’t betray us, but with the way Gia treats her, I wouldn’t be surprised if she feels some sort of resentment toward The Syndicate. Is her lack of presence in this surveillance some sort of indication of her complicity? If she was involved in the attack, could she have hired Deniz?
I place that train of thought in a little box to follow later, focusing instead on the documents in front of me.
There are thousands of folders with hundreds of files in each, making it impossible to search every one. I can’t find any videos from before last November, but there are documents. Hotel receipts and lists of passport stamps and delivery orders. Deniz knows more about me than my family does.
Despite all of this, I can’t find one single scrap of information about him. No ties to employers or receipts of payment. It’s like his entire life has revolved around stalking me, at least for the last twelve months.
My last option is to search Konstantin’s name. It’s a risk, making what I’m looking for so obvious. And it’s completely possible that, even if there are no results, Deniz has hidden any connection with his employer, instead of putting it on display like all of this.
But I have to know. Slowly, I type the name into the search function of his hard drive and hit enter.
Not one reference.
My shoulders relax slightly, knowing this small piece of evidence means little. I click out of the open files before turning to face the camera in the corner, holding up my middle finger as I walk out the door.