Chapter 2 Alexandra #2
The name hits me like a slap. I keep my face blank, but something must show, because Leone’s eyes narrow a fraction.
“Viktor who?” I manage.
“Viktor Sava. The man who warned you. The man who thought he could steal from the Bonaccorso family and run.” Leone pauses, letting each word land. “The man who’s currently in our basement, telling us everything he knows about you.”
I shrug and examine the ceiling. “Great decorator, by the way. Very consistent palette. If you’re going to torture me, you could at least do it in a room with some taste.”
Leone ignores that. “You’ll talk. People always do.”
“Then why am I still breathing?”
He doesn’t answer. Instead, he leans back and studies me like a specimen—a bug he hasn’t decided whether to crush or pin to a board. His jaw ticks once.
“Viktor warned you,” he says again. “Why?”
I think about the dive bar, the joint, the sad country songs. Viktor wasn’t my boyfriend. We hooked up a few times when I was bored and he was high, but that’s all it was. Sweat and smoke and nothing that mattered.
Except he tried to save me. Risked everything to give me a head start that I wasted.
“Maybe he liked me,” I say. “Can’t imagine why. I’m very unlikeable.”
The guard behind me steps closer. His aftershave is cheap and aggressive, the kind that announces itself from ten feet away. I don’t flinch. That’s what they want.
Leone says, “We know you were at the docks. We know you met with Castillo’s people. We know you took the information.”
I blink. Information? That’s new. I file it away, keep my face unimpressed.
“Wow,” I say. “You should work for the NSA.”
He doesn’t blink.
I let the silence stretch, then sigh. “Look, I’m a courier. I pick things up, drop them off. No one tells me what’s in the packages. I don’t ask. Asking is how you end up dead.”
Leone’s stare could freeze magma. “Who hired you?”
“I told you. No names. text messages and cash.”
“Describe them.”
“Can’t. Never met face-to-face.” That part’s true. The jobs came through a burner phone that got replaced every two weeks. Voice modulator on the calls. Instructions in clipped, robotic sentences. “Whoever runs it knows how to stay invisible.”
He paces the room now, a lion in a concrete zoo. The guards watch him, not me. Interesting.
“You’re protecting someone,” he says.
“I’m protecting myself. There’s a difference.”
He rounds on me, and for the first time, I see the violence simmering beneath the control. His hands flex like he wants to wrap them around my throat.
“You think this is a game?”
I meet his eyes. “Isn’t it?”
For a second, neither of us moves. Then his fist unclenches. He walks to the door, signals to the guards.
“You’ll stay here until you remember something useful.”
The guards linger after he leaves. Aftershave steps forward, face blank as drywall. “Breakfast will arrive shortly. If you need anything, knock.”
I almost laugh. “Thanks for your concern.”
He glances at the decanter still sitting on the table. “Don’t try using that as a weapon.”
“No promises.”
They leave. The lock clicks.
I collapse back onto the bed and replay every second. Leone didn’t buy my act… he’s too controlled, too patient. But he also hasn’t hurt me. Whatever they need, they need me intact to get it.
Intact isn’t the same as free.
I walk to the window and push the heavy curtain aside. The courtyard below is immaculate, geometric, symmetry only psychopaths and billionaires care about. I count six guards patrolling the perimeter in formation, never looking at each other, moving like chess pieces on a timer.
I let the curtain fall and turn back to my gilded prison.
Viktor’s dead. I feel it in my gut, even without confirmation. He warned me, and they caught him, and now he’s a body in a basement or a stain on a concrete floor. He wasn’t a hero. He wasn’t even a good person. But he tried to save me, and that must mean something.
I do pushups until my arms shake. Squats until my thighs burn. Anything to keep my blood moving, my brain sharp, my panic buried. I hum tuneless songs under my breath and pretend the cameras aren’t watching.
Hours pass. Meals arrive—plain but edible—and I eat because starving myself is a shitty way to die. The light changes. I feel myself getting smaller, the room pressing in.
When Leone comes back, it’s only him. He looks tired. The suit is the same, but there are shadows under his eyes that weren’t there before.
He sits without a word.
“Round two?” I ask.
He studies me. “You’re scared.”
I laugh, but it comes out thin. “Of you? Please.”
“Not of me.” He leans forward, arms braced on his knees. “You’re scared of what happened to Viktor.”
I bite the inside of my cheek hard enough to taste copper. “He can handle himself.”
“He’s dead.”
“You’re lying.”
Leone shrugs. “Believe what you want.”
I stare at the ceiling and think about sticky floors and sad country songs. About a man who rolled joints like it was meditation and told me I was too smart for this life.
“Why did you become a courier?” Leone asks, his voice quieter now.
The question catches me off guard. “Money.”
He waits.
I sigh. “My dad owes people. A lot of people. I tried to pay them off, keep him breathing another month. Then the jobs got bigger, the money got better, and—” I stop. Swallow. “I’m not a hero. I’m not a spy. I didn’t want my father to end up in a shallow grave.”
Leone nods slowly. “You’re not the first.”
He stands, moves to the door. Pauses.
“Viktor talked before he died,” he says, not looking at me. “He said you were innocent. Said you didn’t know what you were carrying.” A beat. “I’m inclined to believe him.”
Then he’s gone.
I sit in the silence and let the tears come. Just for a minute. Just long enough to feel human.
Viktor tried to save me. He died for it. And I didn’t even know his last name until Leone said it like a curse.
Sava. Viktor Sava.
I roll the name around in my mouth, tasting the shape of it. A name for a gravestone no one will ever build.
The light outside has shifted again. Afternoon bleeding toward evening, the city starting to glow against the darkening sky. I’ve been in this room for what feels like years, but it can’t be more than a day and a half. Time moves differently in cages.
I stand at the window and press my palm flat against the glass. Cold seeps into my skin, grounding me. Below, the guards have changed shifts. New faces, same formation, same blank expressions. They move like machines, precise and predictable.
Predictable is good. Predictable means patterns. Patterns mean weaknesses.
I file away what I’ve observed: mealtimes, guard rotations, Leone’s visits. The rhythm of this place. Every prison has a rhythm, and every rhythm has a gap.
I don’t know when I’ll find mine. But I know I’ll keep looking.
My father—Raymond Clark, the man who taught me to ride a bike and then pawned it for poker money enters my thoughts, unbidden.
The man who held my hand at my mother’s funeral and then disappeared into a casino for three days.
The man whose debts became my inheritance, whose failures became my chains.
I should hate him. Most days, I do.
But I also remember the man he was before.
Before the gambling swallowed him whole.
Before my mother’s medical bills broke his brain in a way that pills and therapy couldn’t fix.
He used to make pancakes shaped like animals on Sunday mornings.
He used to read me bedtime stories with different voices for every character. He used to be a father.
Now he’s a debt I’ll never finish paying.
I wipe my face, square my shoulders, and start planning.
Leone said Viktor believed I was innocent. That means Leone might believe it too. And if the right-hand man of this whole operation thinks I’m not the enemy, that’s leverage.
Leverage is how you survive in a world that wants you dead.
I look around my prison, the burgundy walls, the crystal decanter, the cameras watching my every breath, and I make myself a promise.
I will get out of here.
I will make them regret underestimating me.
And I will never, ever let another man decide my fate.
Tomorrow, I think, climbing into the ridiculous bed and pulling the cold sheets up to my chin.
Tomorrow, we play a different game.