Chapter 8 Alexandra #2
The compound's kitchen is industrial. Stainless steel everything, commercial ovens, a walk-in freezer that could hold a body.
Probably has. Two soldiers sit at a long table eating sandwiches in silence.
They look up when I enter. One of them stiffens.
The other just watches, chewing slowly, eyes tracking me like a surveillance camera.
Emilio ignores them both. He grabs two plates from the counter, loads them with whatever's available, leftover pasta, bread, some red meat I don't ask about, and drops one in front of me at the far end of the table.
"Eat," he says, already shoveling food into his mouth.
I sit. The two soldiers are still watching. I pick up my fork and eat without looking at them.
Emilio talks between bites. Nothing important.
Complaints about the compound's coffee. A story about Claudio losing a bet and having to clean the armory with a toothbrush.
He's loud and easy and fills the silence without effort.
I get the sense he does this on purpose.
Not because he likes the sound of his own voice, but because he understands that silence in a room full of armed men can feel like a threat.
"You're the one who found Renzo," one of the soldiers says. Not hostile. flat.
I look at him. Mid-thirties, shaved head, thick hands wrapped around a coffee mug. "Yeah."
He nods slowly. "Good. Fucker got three of my friends killed."
He goes back to his sandwich. That's it. No thank you, no handshake, no grand gesture. acknowledgment. In this world, that might be the highest compliment available.
Emilio catches my eye across the table and winks.
I eat my pasta and try not to think about the fact that I'm sitting in a mafia kitchen, eating lunch with killers, and feeling more at home than I have in years.
We're walking back through the corridors when I see Leone.
He's at the far end of the hallway, coming from the direction of Aurelio's study. Two soldiers flank him, and he's talking low, giving orders, his hands moving in sharp, efficient gestures. He hasn't seen me yet.
Then he looks up.
The shift is small. Invisible to anyone who doesn't know what to look for.
His stride doesn't break. His expression doesn't change.
But his eyes find mine across forty feet of corridor and hold, and something passes between us that has no name.
Not a look. Not a signal. It lives in the body, in the blood.
Recognition. Possession. Want.
Two seconds. Maybe three. Then his eyes release me and he's talking to his soldiers again, and Emilio is steering me around the corner, and the moment evaporates.
But my skin is buzzing. Every nerve lit up from a look that lasted less than a heartbeat.
Emilio glances at me sideways. "You okay? You look flushed."
"I'm fine. The pasta was spicy."
"It was plain spaghetti."
"Then I'm allergic to your company."
He laughs, loud and genuine, and claps me on the shoulder hard enough to stagger me. "I like you. Leone's got taste, I'll give him that."
My stomach drops. "I don't know what you're—"
"Relax. I'm not going to broadcast it. But I'm not blind, either." He stops outside Leone's door, leaning against the wall. "He's different since you showed up. Looser. Still terrifying, obviously, but there's more in there that wasn't before." He taps his chest. "The twins notice these things."
"And what do the twins think about it?"
He grins. "Claudio thinks it's a liability. I think it's about goddamn time. Man’s dick hasn’t seen the light of day in forever. Anymore pent up and his shit will turn into diamonds."
He walks away, whistling, leaving me standing in the corridor with my heart in my throat.
Inside the room, I close the door and lean against it. My hands are trembling. Not from fear. From the stress of what's happening. The relationship that isn't supposed to exist, the secret that's already leaking through the cracks, the war that doesn't care about any of it.
I go back to the desk. Back to the documents. Back to Apex Meridian Holdings and the New York address and the money that flows both ways.
I work until the light changes, and the courtyard fills with long shadows.
Leone returns at dusk. He closes the door behind him, and I watch his face for any sign of how the conversation with Aurelio went. He's harder to read than usual. Locked tight, giving nothing away.
"Well?" I ask.
"He knows."
"And?"
"He's... considering." Leone sheds his jacket, drapes it over the chair. Unholsters his gun and sets it on the nightstand with the careful reverence of a man putting down a rosary. "He didn't say no."
"But he didn't say yes."
"Aurelio doesn't say yes to anything the first time it's presented. He processes. He calculates. He'll give me an answer when he's ready."
I nod, swallowing the anxiety. "Okay."
"Okay." He looks at me, and for a second the mask slips and I see the man from this morning. The one who held me in the dark and breathed me in like I was oxygen. "It'll be fine."
"You don't know that."
"No. But I'll make sure of it."
I want to push. I want to ask what happens if Aurelio says they can't be together, if Leone is willing to defy the man he's served for twenty years, if this thing between us is strong enough to survive the world they've built.
Instead, I say, "I found more. In the financials."
His focus shifts instantly. The soldier snapping back into place, alert and hungry for intel. "Show me."
I walk him through it. The parallel money streams. The skimming from Bonaccorso accounts. The convergence point in Cyprus and the trail leading to Apex Meridian Holdings. His face gets darker with every word.
"Someone is bleeding us," he says when I finish.
"Someone is bleeding both of you. The Castillo’s think they're getting funded by an ally. You didn't even know you were being drained. And whoever's pulling the strings is sitting in New York, collecting from both sides."
Leone stares at the documents spread across the desk. His hands are flat on the surface, fingers spread, and I can see the tension in his forearms, the tendons standing out like cables.
"Apex Meridian Holdings," he repeats quietly.
"It's the first real name in the chain. Everything else is ghost corporations and routing numbers. But this one has an address. A physical location. That means people. Employees. Records."
He's quiet for a long time. Then he gathers the documents, careful and methodical, stacking them in order.
"I'm taking this to Aurelio tonight."
"Leone."
He looks at me.
"Whoever this is, they're not funding a war. They're engineering one. Both families are in the shit one way or another. If the Bonaccorso’s and the Castillo’s destroy each other, this person inherits everything that's left."
His chest heaves with the force of his sigh. "I know."
"So what do you do?"
He tucks the documents under his arm and crosses to where I'm sitting. His free hand cups the side of my face, thumb brushing my cheekbone. Brief. Restrained. But his eyes burn with desire that makes my chest ache.
"I burn them down before they burn us," he says.
Then he leaves, and I sit at the empty desk and stare at the space where the documents were.
My phone buzzes.
Not my phone. I don't have a phone. Leone's backup, the one he left on the nightstand for emergencies. I pick it up.
One message. Unknown number. No text.
A photo.
Me. Walking through the corridor with Emilio. Taken from inside the compound. Today.
My blood goes cold.
Someone inside these walls is watching. And they want me to know it.