The Architect (The Inferno #4)

Chapter 1 Valentino

THE LOCK ON my apartment door stuck like it always did, and I had to jiggle the key twice before the mechanism finally gave.

Four in the morning and my hands were shaking badly enough that even this simple task felt monumental.

I shouldered the door open and stumbled into my cramped Brooklyn studio, dropping the messenger bag full of files onto the floor with a heavy thud that probably woke my downstairs neighbor.

I didn't care.

The files could stay there. The story Luca had just handed me—some councilman taking kickbacks from construction companies, real estate fraud, the kind of mid-level corruption that would make headlines for exactly one news cycle—could wait until I'd slept.

Or tried to sleep. Sleep had become theoretical lately, something other people did while I lay awake cataloging my moral compromises.

I locked the door behind me. Both locks. The deadbolt too. Then I checked the locks again because paranoia had become my constant companion ever since Luca Romano walked into my life three months ago and turned everything I thought I knew about myself into a lie.

My reflection caught in the darkened window over the kitchen sink.

I looked like hell. Curly hair I'd forgotten to cut weeks ago stood up in wild directions.

My dress shirt—the one nice one I owned that wasn't actively falling apart—was rumpled from the cab ride home.

Dark circles under my hazel eyes made me look older than twenty-five.

I'd lost weight I couldn't afford to lose, my already lean frame verging on gaunt.

The stress was killing me slowly. Nearly two months of this arrangement with Luca and I barely recognized myself anymore.

I splashed cold water on my face and told myself the shaking would stop eventually.

The apartment was exactly as I'd left it six hours ago: chaos barely contained within four hundred square feet.

Books everywhere because I'd never met a research source I didn't want to keep.

Stacks of newspapers and printed articles covering every surface.

My laptop open on the tiny kitchen table that served as my desk, surrounded by coffee cups in various states of abandonment.

The narrow bed shoved against the far wall, unmade because I hadn't been sleeping in it much lately.

Hadn't been sleeping here at all some nights.

I sank onto the bed and stared at the messenger bag across the room.

Inside were the files on Councilman Rodriguez and his very illegal real estate deals.

Information that had fallen into my lap—been placed into my lap—by Luca.

Another story I'd write. Another truth I'd expose.

Another way I'd be doing exactly what Luca wanted while telling myself I still had integrity left.

My phone buzzed. A text message lit up the screen.

Unknown Number: Did you get home safely?

I stared at it. Luca had never texted me after one of our meetings before. Usually our contact was limited to his summons—terse messages telling me when and where to appear—and my eventual compliance.

This was different. This was almost... concerned.

I typed back: You put a tracker on me or something?

The response came immediately: I prefer to think of it as being attentive.

That's a yes.

Get some sleep, Valentino. You'll need it for the Rodriguez story.

I threw my phone across the room. It bounced off the cheap futon I used as a couch and landed on a pile of laundry I'd been meaning to wash for a week. The screen stayed lit, mocking me with its evidence that Luca Romano was in my head.

I needed to sleep. Tomorrow I'd wake up and write the Rodriguez exposé and collect another award I didn't deserve for journalism that had been handed to me instead of earned.

I'd take Luca's information and I'd craft it into something that looked like investigative reporting instead of what it really was: me being his puppet.

But sleep felt impossible. My mind was already spinning, replaying the last three months in vivid, humiliating detail.

It had started so differently. So innocently, if anything about Luca Romano could be called innocent.

***

The coffee shop on the Lower East Side was one of those aggressively hip places where everything cost twice what it should and the baristas looked at you with judgment if you ordered anything less complicated than a pour-over with oat milk and cinnamon.

I'd chosen it specifically because it was neutral territory, public enough to be safe, trendy enough that nobody would pay attention to two guys having coffee.

I arrived fifteen minutes early. Old habit from journalism school: never let a source control the meeting. Get there first, pick the table, establish yourself as the professional.

Except Luca Romano was already there.

He sat at a corner table with perfect sight lines to both the door and the windows, a tiny espresso in front of him that he hadn't touched.

Even in a coffee shop full of Brooklyn creatives in artfully distressed denim, he stood out.

The suit alone probably cost more than my monthly rent—gray, perfectly tailored, worn with the kind of casual elegance that said he put on thousand-dollar suits the way normal people put on jeans.

Dark hair swept back from a face that was all sharp angles and calculated charm.

He was maybe thirty-five, maybe older, the kind of man who'd look thirty-five until he hit fifty and then would age into distinguished instead of old.

He looked up when I walked in. Made eye contact across the crowded shop. Smiled.

That smile should have been a warning. It was too perfect, too practiced, the smile of someone who'd learned exactly how to disarm people and had spent years perfecting the technique. It said trust me and I'm harmless and we're going to be friends all at once.

I didn't buy it for a second.

But I felt it anyway. The pull. The dangerous, unwanted attraction that hit me like a physical force.

He was beautiful in the way predators are beautiful—all lethal grace wrapped in expensive cologne and careful charisma.

When he stood to shake my hand, I noticed he was taller than I'd expected.

Six-one, maybe six-two to my five-ten. His grip was firm without being aggressive, his hand warm against mine.

"Mr. Russo. Thank you for meeting with me." His voice was smooth, cultured, the kind of voice that sold penthouses and brokered deals worth millions. "I've been following your work. You're quite talented."

"Mr. Romano." I pulled my hand back and sat across from him, putting the table between us like it might protect me from whatever this was. "Your message was vague. Something about a story I'd be interested in?"

"Luca, please. Mr. Romano makes me sound like my father." He gestured to the barista. "Can I get you something? Coffee? They do an excellent cortado here."

"I'm fine." I wasn't about to let him buy me coffee. Wasn't about to owe him anything, not even a four-dollar drink.

His smile widened like he knew exactly what I was thinking. "Suit yourself."

He slid a thin folder across the table. I opened it carefully, ready for anything from threats to bribery. What I found instead made my breath catch.

Documents. Financial records. Emails. A entire dossier on Winston Bianchi's operations in Chicago—the construction contracts awarded through bribery, the politicians on his payroll, the arranged marriage of his youngest son to consolidate power.

"How did you get this?" I looked up at him, suspicious and hungry in equal measure. This was the story. The one that could make my career.

"I have my sources. Just like you have yours." Luca leaned back in his chair, perfectly relaxed. "The question isn't where I got it. The question is what you're going to do with it."

"Why give it to me?" The journalism instinct in me screamed that this was too good to be true. Nobody handed you a career-making story without wanting something in return. "What do you want?"

"I want the Bianchi family exposed. They've been operating with impunity for too long.

Winston Bianchi thinks his connections to law enforcement make him untouchable.

" Luca's expression hardened slightly, the charm slipping just enough to show something cold underneath. "I'd like to prove him wrong."

"And you can't do that yourself because...?"

"Because I'm not an award-winning investigative journalist with a reputation for protecting sources and exposing corruption." The charm was back, smooth as silk. "You are. People trust you. When Valentino Russo publishes a story, readers believe it."

I stared at the documents. Everything I needed was right here. Six months of work condensed into a manila folder. All I had to do was take it.

"This isn't exclusive, is it?" I asked carefully. "You could give this to any journalist in New York."

"I could." Luca's dark eyes held mine. "But I'm giving it to you.

You can be the one to break the story. You'll have a head start—twenty-four hours before I even consider offering it elsewhere.

Enough time to verify sources, draft your article, submit it to your editors.

You'll get the byline. The awards. The recognition. "

Twenty-four hours. Enough time if I worked fast. If I dropped everything else and focused solely on this.

"Why?" I asked again. "Why me specifically?"

Luca was quiet for a moment. Then: "Because I've read everything you've written in the past two years.

You're thorough. You're honest. You don't sensationalize—you report facts and let readers draw their own conclusions.

That's rare in journalism these days." He paused.

"And because I think you're hungry enough to actually do something with this.

You want to make your name. This is how you do it. "

He was right. I did want it. Wanted it so badly I could taste it.