Chapter Five #2
Not easy enough that I forgot Raven in my ear or Wolf listening to every breath the microphone picked up.
Still, Luca was not an interrogation target who needed to be tricked into a confession.
He was a wealthy man at a pool party talking to a woman he found attractive, and the cover worked because I did not force it to become more complicated than that.
He asked who I worked with. I gave him the family-office version Raven had built and enough details about European property restructuring to make the answer boring in the correct way. Luca mentioned one of his own funds, then watched my face when I did not immediately praise it.
“There,” he said. “That expression. I remember it now.”
“You absolutely do not.”
“Maybe I remember the type.”
“Women who question your fees?”
“Women who enjoy telling me I’m wrong.”
I took a drink. “That sounds like a large demographic.”
His hand touched my waist when a server moved behind me, guiding me half a step closer to the bar so the tray could pass.
The contact was brief and completely normal but my body still became aware of it.
Luca left his hand there one second longer than necessary and Wolf’s voice instantly came into my ear.
“Stay on task.”
The command was quiet and flat.
I kept smiling at Luca. “I am.”
“Sorry?” Luca asked.
I lifted the glass slightly. “I said I am deciding whether the champagne deserves a second chance.”
“And?”
“Still under review.”
His thumb moved once against the linen at my side before his hand dropped.
In my ear, Wolf chimed in, “You aren’t there to entertain yourself.”
Anger flashed through me.
I turned toward the pool as though something there had caught my attention and gritted my teeth. “Then stop narrating my job while I’m doing it.”
The line went silent long enough that I could almost feel Wolf deciding which part of that sentence he hated most, but Raven cut in before he answered. “Bellandi’s phone just joined the guest network. Keep him where you have him if you can.”
At least that gave me something useful to focus on, so I looked back at Luca.
“You know almost nobody here,” he said.
“Is it that obvious?”
“You still look interested in people.”
I laughed. “Give me an hour.”
“Come on. I’ll ruin that for you.”
He led me away from the bar, and the next stretch of the party became the reason I had argued so hard to get inside in the first place.
Luca knew people.
More importantly, people wanted Luca to know them.
He introduced me to a property developer from Vienna whose security contractor had changed drivers twice in one month.
He brought me into a conversation with a German logistics executive who complained that private events near Ulm had become impossible to staff because one particular firm kept hiring temporary security away from everyone else.
A man from Milan mentioned Morgenstern Sicherheitslogistik in the context of executive transport, and Luca dismissed the company as “useful but humorless,” which told me more than a database entry would have.
I kept my questions light and let other people fill silence. Whenever a useful name surfaced, I repeated it naturally so Raven would have clean audio.
“Morgenstern? I thought they were mostly Austrian.”
“Ulm? I know the area. Which side?”
“Südweg Transport still operates privately?”
Nothing I said sounded like an interview, which was the advantage of being able to let people believe they were only talking about themselves.
Raven occasionally fed me a surname or told me when a device appeared on the network. Wolf mostly stayed quiet, which should have made the work easier. Instead, I found myself noticing every time he did speak.
“Don’t follow him inside.”
“Stay where Hawk has you.”
“Move left. Security is coming down the terrace.”
No praise and no reassurance. Every instruction came with the same cold certainty he used when telling me I was temporary, except now his voice was pressed directly into my ear while I stood in a bikini among strangers. It was unfairly intimate for a man who sounded like he disliked me personally.
Luca eventually handed me a fresh glass of sparkling water without asking.
“You stopped drinking the champagne.”
“I have to remember enough of these conversations to insult you accurately later.”
“You plan to see me again?”
“Don’t get excited.”
“Too late.”
His hand settled at my lower back as we moved around a group near the pool, palm warm through the thin linen. Wolf’s voice came at once.
“Mercer.”
I nearly rolled my eyes.
“What?”
“Your cover doesn’t require you to crawl into his pocket.”
The words were so unnecessarily sharp that I almost missed a step.
I kept my face pleasant for Luca and lowered my voice. “He’s touching me, not the other way around.”
“Then remember why you’re letting him.”
“I know why.”
“Could’ve fooled me.”
Typical Wolf. Mean enough to get under my skin and controlled enough that nobody outside the comms channel would ever know. I smiled at Luca while imagining several ways to throw Wolf’s coffee mug through a wall when we got back.
Luca’s attention shifted past my shoulder and his whole posture changed. He lifted his chin toward the upper terrace.
“Well. There’s someone I wasn’t expecting.”
I followed his gaze carefully.
A man had stepped through the open doors of the house with long dark hair pulled partly back from his face and a white shirt rolled to his forearms. He looked young, and for one second the surveillance photographs became useless because the man standing in front of me was too real for them.
The file had taught me pieces: height estimated from doorframes, hair color pulled from poor light, a jaw caught at an angle and eyes never clear enough to hold for long. In front of me, those pieces assembled into a person.
My fingers tightened around the glass. The edges of the party blurred out of focus for a beat while I watched him.
“Mercer,” Wolf said.
I realized I had stopped moving.
“I see him.”
Raven’s voice sharpened. “Confirm position.”
I covered my mouth with my hand. “Upper terrace. West doors. White shirt. Long dark hair, half tied back.”
Hawk answered first. “Visual.”
A pause.
“Matches file. Kade confirmed.”
My mouth had gone dry.
Luca looked at me. “You know him?”
I dropped my hand and forced my attention back to Luca. “Should I?”
“That depends who you ask.”
“I’m asking you.”
He smiled, but his eyes had already moved toward the terrace again. “Then maybe.”
“Very helpful.”
“I have a reputation to protect.”
“For being vague?”
“For making women curious.”
I laughed only because the cover required it. Kade began walking down the terrace. I kept my body turned toward Luca and watched only in fragments.
He was more innocent looking than the intelligence designation felt.
Mid-twenties. His hair reached his shoulders with half of it pulled back into a loose bun and freckles were visible across the bridge of his nose when he moved into better light.
Nothing about his appearance matched the weight ARC had placed around him.
In plain terms, he looked too handsome. That disconnect unsettled me more than if he had looked exactly like the monster the files implied.
“Don’t stare,” Wolf said.
“I’m not.”
“You stopped blinking.”
“Can you focus on anything besides my face?”
“When your face stops broadcasting, maybe.”
Fuck him.
Luca looked toward me again. “What did I miss?”
“Nothing.”
“You looked like you remembered something.”
“Maybe I remembered Milan?” I said.
“Now you’re definitely lying.”
He smiled and touched my arm as though the exchange amused him.
Then Kade reached us.
Luca greeted him without using a name.
“Ah, you actually came.”
Kade’s gaze stayed on Luca for a moment. “Yes.”
His English was too brief to confirm any accent.
“Surprised. You avoid parties unless someone important is miserable.”
Kade just smirked.
A blonde woman in a bronze bikini joined us from the other side and kissed Luca on the cheek before greeting Kade with the familiarity of someone who had seen him before. Nobody introduced him and nobody seemed to find that strange.
Luca gestured toward me instead. “Oh, this is Mia Morgan. American money with American opinions.”
“That’s becoming a very unfair summary of my career,” I giggled toward Luca.
“You told me I overcharge.”
“You do.”
The woman laughed.
Kade looked at me, and the party seemed to fall away in the space between one breath and the next.
His eyes looked green, clearer than any photograph had ever managed, and they moved across my face and hair before settling back on mine with a stillness that made the skin along my arms tighten.
My stomach lurched, the nervous flutter in it souring into nausea almost immediately.
I made myself smile and tilted my head, trying to act natural. “Nice to meet you.”
Kade answered briefly in Serbian. My pulse struck hard once against my throat and I responded in whatever Serbian I remembered in that moment.
Luca glanced between us.
Kade’s expression changed so slightly that anyone who was not already looking directly at him would have missed it, a tiny pull near one corner of his mouth and something in his eyes opening before it closed again.
Raven’s voice came through my ear, energized by the access. “Good. Keep him talking. Trying to pinpoint an accent.”
Wolf said nothing.
Luca laughed. “You speak Serbian too?”
I dragged my attention away from Kade. “Enough to embarrass myself internationally.”
“How many languages do you have hidden?”
“Depends how drunk everyone gets.”
The blond woman raised her glass. “Finally, a useful skill.”
Kade did not laugh.
He kept watching me until Luca asked him something about a man named Emil, and only then did his attention move. The conversation shifted into Italian and this time, I followed without difficulty.