Chapter 4 Alexandra
Chapter Four: Alexandra
I wake up thinking about patterns.
Not the kind on the wallpaper—though God knows I’ve memorized every swirl and flourish of this burgundy nightmare—but the kind that get people killed.
The shipping manifests Leone brought me yesterday are still spread across the desk, and even with my eyes closed, I can see the gaps.
Every third Tuesday. Like someone punched holes in a calendar and forgot to explain why.
I roll out of bed and pad to the bathroom, splashing cold water on my face until my skin stings. The mirror shows a woman I barely recognize, hair tangled, circles under her eyes, jaw set like she’s expecting a fight. I look feral. Cornered.
Good. Cornered animals bite.
Breakfast arrives at 7:15, same as always.
The guard with the cheap aftershave. I’ve started calling him Axe Body Spray in my head, slides the tray through a slot in the door without making eye contact.
Scrambled eggs, toast, orange juice, a small cup of fruit.
Better than anything I ate in my real life, which is a depressing thought I shove aside.
I eat standing up, pacing the room between bites. Movement keeps me sharp. Stillness lets fear creep in.
By the time Leone arrives at nine, I’ve done a hundred squats, fifty pushups, and memorized the patrol rotation visible from my window. Three guards circle the courtyard in twelve-minute intervals. They switch positions at the top of each hour. Predictable. Exploitable.
Not that I have anywhere to run.
Leone enters without knocking, apparently that’s his thing now, and drops a fresh stack of files on the desk. He’s wearing the same style suit as always, dark and perfectly fitted, but there’s a tightness around his eyes that wasn’t there yesterday.
“Rough night?” I ask, grabbing the files before he can respond.
“Something like that.”
I flip through the pages. More manifests. More schedules. A few photographs of men I don’t recognize, their faces circled in red marker. “Who are these guys?”
“Persons of interest.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the only one you’re getting.”
I roll my eyes and spread the documents across the bed, arranging them by date. Leone watches from his usual spot by the door, arms crossed, face unreadable. I’ve started thinking of that expression as his factory setting, blank, controlled, giving away nothing.
Except it does give things away. Little things. The way his teeth grind together when I push too hard. The way his eyes track my movements when he thinks I’m not looking. The way he positions himself between me and the door, even though we both know I’m not stupid enough to run.
He’s protective. He doesn’t want to be, but he is.
I file that information away with everything else I’ve learned about him. Leone Costa: violent, disciplined, loyal to a fault. Doesn’t sleep enough. Doesn’t eat enough. Carries guilt like other men carry wallets—always there, always weighing him down, never acknowledged.
“This one.” I tap a manifest dated three weeks ago. “The gap I found yesterday? It lines up with this delivery. See?” I pull another document from the pile. “They moved double the usual product the week before and the week after, but nothing on the Tuesday itself. They’re compensating.”
Leone crosses the room, leaning over my shoulder to look. He smells so fucking good, it’s messing with my head. I ignore the way my pulse ticks up when he gets close.
“Compensating for what?” he asks.
“That’s what I’m trying to figure out.” I chew my lip, staring at the numbers. “If I had to guess? They’re using that window for something off-books. Something they don’t want mixed with regular shipments.”
“Such as?”
“Could be anything. High-value cargo. Human trafficking. Weapons.” I glance up at him. “You’d know better than me what the Castillo’s are into.”
His expression doesn’t change, but something flickers behind his eyes. “All of the above.”
Right. Of course. I forget sometimes that I’m dealing with actual monsters, not men in nice suits.
I turn back to the documents, forcing my hands to stay steady. “Then my money’s on trafficking. Weapons are bulky… they’d show up in weight discrepancies. Drugs would fit the regular shipments. But people?” I shake my head. “People need special handling. Separate routes. Dedicated windows.”
Leone is quiet. When I look up, he’s watching me with an expression I can’t quite name.
“You figured that out in two days,” he says.
“I’m a fast learner.”
“You’re wasted as a courier.”
I laugh, short and bitter. “Yeah, well. Not a lot of career opportunities for girls with gambling addicts for fathers. You take what you can get.”
He doesn’t respond to that. keeps watching me with those dark, unreadable eyes.
I break first and look away, shuffle the papers, pretend to study something I’ve already memorized. The silence stretches until I want to scream.
“Can I ask you a question?” I say finally.
“You can ask.”
“Why are you being nice to me?”
His eyebrows lift a fraction. “You think this is nice?”
“Compared to what I expected? Yeah.” I gesture at the room, the plush bed, the private bathroom, the meals that arrive like clockwork. “I figured I’d be chained to a pipe in a basement somewhere, getting my teeth pulled out one by one. Instead, I’m doing homework and eating fresh fruit.”
Leone’s fists clench. “We’re not animals.”
“Could’ve fooled me.” I meet his eyes, holding steady. “I saw you kill those men in the raid. I saw how easy it was for you. Don’t pretend you’re above the basement-and-pliers routine.”
A cold glint clouds his eyes. “I do what’s necessary. That doesn’t mean I enjoy it.”
“Does it matter? Dead is dead.”
“It matters to me.”
The words land harder than they should. I search his face for the lie, the manipulation, the angle he’s playing. I don’t find it.
That scares me more than anything else.
He leaves the files and tells me to keep working.
I do, partly because I want to be useful and partly because it keeps my brain from eating itself.
The patterns emerge slowly, like pictures hidden in static.
I map routes, cross-reference dates, flag anomalies that might mean something or might mean nothing.
By afternoon, my eyes burn and my back aches from hunching over the desk. I stand and stretch, vertebrae popping like bubble wrap. Through the window, the courtyard is quiet. Two guards instead of three—shift change, or someone else pulling resources elsewhere.
I press my palm to the glass and watch the sun drop toward the horizon. Somewhere out there, my father is probably sitting at a card table, trading whatever scraps of dignity he has left for one more hand. He doesn’t know I’m gone. Probably wouldn’t care if he did.
That’s not fair. He’d care. He just cares about the debt more.
I was eighteen when she died. Old enough to understand what killed her wasn’t the disease. It was the stress. The fear. The slow, grinding weight of loving someone who would never stop destroying themselves.
My father stood at her funeral and cried like his heart was breaking. Three days later, he was back at the tables.
I’ve spent the last eight years trying to save him. Paying off debts that multiply faster than I can count. Taking jobs that got shadier and shadier because the money was better and better. Telling myself that eventually, somehow, I’d dig us out of the hole.
The hole just kept getting deeper.
And now I’m here. Locked in a cage, surrounded by men who kill for a living, trading information for the privilege of staying alive.
Mom would be so proud.
I laugh, and it comes out wet. I wipe my eyes with the back of my hand and force myself to breathe. Crying is useless. Crying doesn’t change anything. Crying is for people who have the luxury of falling apart.
I don’t.
Dinner arrives at six. Axe Body Spray, right on schedule.
I eat without tasting, then push the tray aside and return to the documents. There’s something here, something I’m missing. The gap every third Tuesday. The compensating shipments. The photographs of men I don’t recognize.
One of the faces catches my attention. Young guy, early thirties, with a jawline that could cut glass and eyes that look dead even in the photo. There’s a name scrawled on the back: Renzo Marchetti.
I don’t know him. Never seen him before. But something about the way he’s positioned in the photo—slightly apart from the others, watching instead of participating—makes me think he’s important.
I set his picture aside and keep digging.
By the time Leone returns, it’s past ten and I’ve covered the entire bed with paper. He stops in the doorway, surveying the chaos.
“Redecorating?”
“Working.” I don’t look up. “This guy. Renzo. Who is he?”
Leone crosses to the bed, picks up the photo. His expression doesn’t change, but his grip tightens on the edges. “Where did you get this?”
“It was in the stack you gave me this morning.”
He stares at the photo, then sets it down carefully. “Renzo Marchetti. Low-level soldier. Handles transportation logistics.”
“He’s in almost every photo from the past six months. Different locations, different crews, but always there.” I point to the documents spread across the bed. “And look—the shipments he’s associated with? They’re the ones with the gaps.”
Leone goes still. Not the casual stillness of a man thinking, but the coiled stillness of a predator spotting prey.
“You’re sure?”
“I’ve cross-referenced everything twice. He’s the common thread.”
Leone picks up the photo again, studying Renzo’s face like he’s memorizing it for a lineup. “He’s been with us for two years. Aurelio vetted him personally.”
“Then either your vetting process sucks, or someone got to him after.”
His eyes flash. “Watch your mouth.”
“I’m trying to help. You want to shoot the messenger, go ahead, but it won’t change what I found.”