Chapter 2 – Sylvara
The monitor hums like it knows what’s coming. I have been up in my room since. It’s past three in the morning, and I haven’t blinked in maybe an hour. The bourbon’s gone warm beside me. The ashtray’s full again. My fingers ache from typing, scraping, digging—none of it hard enough to dull the pressure building in my chest.
I pull back the rug near my bed and flip open the floor panel. Hinges screech, protesting the movement. I built this vault myself—cut through linoleum and concrete with a rotary saw, patched the edges with fireproof sealant. It’s not just a safe. It’s a grave.
Inside: encrypted drives. Discs labeled in code, in blood. A stack of paper files so thin you’d think I barely lived at all. But each one holds names. Places. Numbers that make men disappear.
And at the center, like rot around the root—one velvet box.
I ignore it. For now.
I pull the drive marked Enzo / Legacy, close the floor, and lock it twice.
Back at the workstation, the old machine boots with a familiar whine. She’s patched together with scavenged parts and spite, but she runs hotter than any government rig. The OS is customized, face-recognition shell nested inside a firewall loop I designed drunk at nineteen. Still hasn’t been breached.
The flash drive clicks in, and the terminal lights up.
I code in. Pull the files. No ceremony. No hesitation. Hesitation is for people who survive childhood with their hands clean.
The name Tony Rizzi blinks back at me. Alias list, two dozen entries deep. Shell corporations in three countries. More red flags than a communist parade.
“I thought I buried you, Rizzi,” I whisper. “But you’re still bleeding into everything I touch.”
Facial rec tags him at a warehouse in East Vegas. Same dead eyes, same slicked-back salt-and-pepper hair. He’s wearing a tan suit and talking to a guy I don’t recognize, but it’s his smug grin that punches me in the throat. The same one he wore the night my father disappeared. The night he died.
I scroll faster. There’s a wire transfer dated four months after Enzo’s supposed death. Rizzi. Offshore routing. Recipient: Veritas Holdings.
I stop.
Veritas.
That name isn’t random.
It was my mother’s.
Her maiden name. Her signature on every piece of pottery she ever fired. The same word she etched into the back of the ceramic pendant I keep hung on my neck at all times. It’s there now—off-white, cracked from time and heat. A tiny curve of her in a world that burned everything else away.
I touch it.
I run my thumb over the etched letters. Veritas. Truth.
“That’s what she named her art,” I whisper. “That’s what he bought with her blood.”
Rizzi didn’t just steal. He mocked us. Branded a shell company with her name and funneled blood money through it. Bought buildings. Paid brokers. Signed contracts using a name I thought was buried in the same box as her wedding band.
I don’t realize I’m crying until the keys blur.
I wipe my eyes. Shake my head. Keep working.
New transfers pop up. Five layers deep. Delaware. Panama. Dubai. All connecting back to Veritas. And through Veritas… to Enzo.
His name’s still on one of the account holders. Not closed. Not archived. Active.
If Enzo’s name is still in these ledgers, he’s not just a ghost.
He’s leverage.
Or bait.
I sit back and light another cigarette. My fingers tremble when I hold it to my lips.
My father never deserved forgiveness. But he didn’t deserve to become a pawn, either. Not like this. Not handed over to a man like Rizzi, who carved futures out of flesh and paid his dues in favors soaked with blood.
My phone buzzes. I ignore it.
The computer beeps—decryption complete. Another tier is unlocked on Kieran’s flash drive. New folders. One’s labeled Rosetti – off books. Another: Velvet Armory. My heart stops on the last.
Sylvara / Asset Watch.
I open it.
Surveillance logs. My name. My face. Dates.
He knew more than he said.
Of course he did.
Every frame is timestamped. Photos of me entering the dive bar. Walking into my apartment. Delivering fake IDs at the club in Paradise Hills. A shot of me sitting at this very terminal, fingers flying, jaw tight.
My entire exile, documented and filed like a case study. Every step I took thinking I was free—recorded. Stamped. Analyzed.
I want to scream.
Instead, I shut the laptop. Hard. The cigarette burns itself out in the tray beside me.
Kieran used me. Watched me.
But he also brought this.
Rizzi. Veritas. Enzo’s ghost.
I walk to the sink, splash water on my face. It stings. I stare at myself in the mirror and barely recognize the woman looking back. Wild hair, eyes bloodshot, a scar peeking from the collar of my tank top. Not a victim. Not a daughter.
Just a weapon that hasn’t been fired in a while.
I don’t sleep.
I pace.
I drink.
When the sun rises over East Fremont, I’m still standing in the center of my apartment, barefoot on cracked tile, the USB drive clutched in one hand.
By noon, I’ll have a burner phone in my pocket.
By nightfall, I’ll make the call.
But right now?
I just whisper one name.
“Rizzi.”
And I start planning how to end him.
The burner phone fits awkward in my back pocket. The keys are sticky, like someone spilled soda on it sometime in the last decade, and the plastic case creaks every time I move. I don't care. It's disposable, anonymous, untraceable. Exactly what I need.
I bought it from a pawn shop run by a guy with more gold on his fingers than teeth in his mouth. He didn’t ask questions, and I didn’t offer answers. The desert sky is still dark when I round the corner to the bar and head for the stairs behind it.
I climb the stairs two at a time, pull my keys from my boot, and stop short.
My door is open.
Just barely. Not kicked in. Not broken. Just open. A small crack, like it was nudged shut and didn’t catch the lock.
No one forgets to lock their door in this part of Vegas. Especially not me.
I take a step back. Listen.
There it is.
A faint scrape. Paper against paper. A drawer sliding shut. Footsteps.
Someone’s inside.
I don't freeze. I move.
I back down the stairs and circle around the building to the alley. There's a steel pipe I wedged into the trash chute months ago, for reasons just like this. I pry it loose, grip it tight, and head back up the stairs.
The door still hangs open.
I step inside.
My apartment has been turned inside out.
Drawers pulled. Cabinets open. My workbench scattered. He didn’t take anything. He’s still looking. But for what?
He doesn’t hear me at first. He’s hunched over my file cabinet, rifling through folders. Built like a bouncer, wide shoulders and a beer gut stuffed into black tactical pants. His back is to me. A pistol holstered at his side, but he hasn’t drawn it.
I step quietly.
The floor creaks.
He spins around, gun half-raised.
"You lost?" I say.
He freezes. Masked. Generic black ski gear. Like every two-bit enforcer who thinks black means invisible.
"You her?" he asks, voice low and hoarse.
"Depends on who’s asking."
"Forget the job. Stay away from Rizzi."
He says it like it’s a casual warning, like he didn’t just tear apart my apartment looking for leverage. His eyes dart around the space, calculating. He realizes now that I came back earlier than expected.
"You people never learn," I mutter.
He raises the gun. Not enough to shoot—just enough to threaten.
I swing the pipe.
It cracks against his forearm. The gun clatters to the floor.
He yells, staggers back, clutching his arm. I jab forward again. He blocks with his elbow and drives his boot into my thigh. Pain shoots up my leg, but I don't drop the pipe.
He charges. We crash against the table. Papers fly. My laptop thuds to the ground with a sick crunch.
He punches. I duck. He grabs my hair. I slam my elbow into his gut.
We grapple. It’s not elegant. It’s rage and instinct and blood.
"You keep digging," he snarls, breath hot and sour, "they’ll bury you next to your mom."
That stops me.
Just long enough.
He headbutts me. Stars burst behind my eyes. I fall back, catch myself on the chair.
He grabs the gun.
I throw the pipe. It hits his wrist. He drops the weapon again and bolts for the door.
I scramble up, but he’s already gone. Down the fire escape, boots clanging. Gone before I can track him.
My chest heaves.
I lock the door. Bolt it. Then drag the metal bar across it.
Everything’s a mess. The place I built to be untouchable has been stripped bare in minutes.
I pick up the burner phone.
Thumb over the keypad.
To: Kieran Santoro
Message: Fine.
Send.
The chisel still lies on the floor from last night. I grip it, blood pounding in my ears.
Outside, dawn bleeds into the skyline. Pale streaks of red stretch across buildings that don’t care about the bodies buried beneath them.
I watch the city wake.
"You want a forger, Santoro?" I whisper. "I’ll give you a masterpiece. Then I burn the whole gallery down."