Chapter 15 A Confession From Pietro’s Shadow #4
Matteo moved his body between Pietro and the guards, shoulder angled, stance wide.
His concealed sidearm pressed against his ribs through the jacket lining, familiar and heavy, a promise he hated needing.
The guards had not fully committed to a breach earlier - only held angles, waiting for the right moment.
Matteo could feel the same calculation now: let the stairwell do the work, then finish him when he was impaired.
Elena’s breath came quick and thin. “Matteo,” she said, and her voice held a warning she didn’t dress up. “The directive on your phone - ”
Matteo’s attention snapped to his phone without him moving it. The screen was dim, but the vibration had started again, steady and insistent, like a heartbeat that didn’t belong to him. He forced himself not to look away from Pietro long enough to read it.
He could feel Elena reading his face anyway. She stepped half a pace closer, shoulder brushing his. “It’s not just routing,” she said. “It’s timing.”
Pietro’s eyes sharpened at that. “Yes.”
Matteo’s fingers tightened on the edge of the note in his jacket pocket - the bloodied paper he hadn’t let go of since the staged interview fiasco, the one he’d been holding like a knife. The note wasn’t just a clue anymore. It was the reason the trap had teeth.
“What note?” Elena demanded, and her voice broke just enough to show she wasn’t asking. She was accusing the air around them of being used.
Matteo didn’t answer her question. Not yet. First he needed Pietro to stop trying to keep him guessing.
“Who benefits from Elena’s exposure?” Matteo asked. The words came out like he was forcing them through clenched teeth. “Not who benefits from her being alive. Who benefits from her being seen. Who benefits from her research being used as bait.”
Pietro’s gaze held Matteo’s with stubborn clarity. “The one who gets to decide what The Shadows looks like from the outside.”
Elena let out a short, disbelieving sound. “That’s not an answer.”
Pietro’s breath hitched. “It’s the only answer I can give without getting someone else killed.”
Matteo felt something ugly twist in his chest. Sympathy didn’t fit Pietro.
Not after what Pietro had done, not after the way he’d kept Matteo chasing fragments and names like a dog after a thrown bone.
Still, the stairwell gas didn’t feel like theater.
The chemical bite was real. The collapse was real.
Pietro’s confession might be partial, but it wasn’t empty.
One of the guards made a move - hand toward the wall panel, a shoulder turning to block Matteo’s view. Matteo reacted on instinct, driving his forearm into the guard’s chest. The guard stumbled back with a grunt that sounded too wet in the confined space.
Elena moved at the same time, pulling her laptop from her bag with quick efficiency despite the burning air. Her fingers flew over the keys, not for comfort - she was still trying to pull what she could before the backup was annihilated. The thought of that drive being gone still tasted like ash.
“Stop!” one of the guards barked.
Matteo’s head snapped toward the sound. He caught the flash of a baton at the guard’s hip and the way his eyes tracked Elena’s hands, not Matteo’s body. That meant Elena was the priority. Again.
Matteo hated it. He hated being reduced to the wall between her and the violence.
Pietro’s voice cut through the chaos, barely louder than a rasp. “Elena’s the access point,” he repeated, and his eyes rolled back for a second before he forced them forward again. “But that doesn’t mean she’s the target. It means she’s the lock they can pick without picking.”
Elena’s movements faltered, just enough for Matteo to see the shift in her expression. She wasn’t confused anymore. She was focused, and that focus looked dangerous on her - like she was already building the next equation.
Matteo leaned closer to Pietro, ignoring the guard who tried to angle his weapon up again. “Pick it,” Matteo said. “Who picks it?”
Pietro’s eyes widened slightly. His pupils tightened as the gas made his body struggle. “Not a hand,” he whispered. “A chain. A channel. A command line buried under legitimate transfers and financial signatures.”
Elena swallowed, and her throat moved hard. “You’re saying my exposure is just a lever.”
Pietro’s head shook. “Your exposure is the proof they need.”
The guards closing in sounded louder now, metal on stone, boots climbing the stairs with wet precision. The stairwell wasn’t just a room - it was a corridor with momentum. Matteo could feel the walls narrowing around them.
Matteo’s phone vibrated again. A coded directive flashed on the screen when he finally forced himself to glance down. The message was short, brutal in its intent, wrapped in a syntax he recognized from the last directive that had tried to route Elena into public custody.
This one wasn’t about custody.
This one was about extraction.
Matteo’s blood went cold.
He looked up at Elena. Her eyes were on Pietro, but her attention was split - she could feel the directive too, could feel the way his posture had changed. She didn’t need him to translate it.
“What does it say?” she asked.
Matteo lifted his gaze to the guards and held it there, buying a second to think. Then he answered Elena without taking his eyes off the threat. “It says we’re moving. Now.”
Elena’s lips parted. “To where?”
Pietro’s laugh came out broken, like it hurt to make sound. “Nowhere you can trust,” he said. “And nowhere you can outrun.”
Matteo’s fingers tightened around the note in his pocket so hard the paper edges pressed into his palm. He could feel the blood from earlier still tacky where it had smeared. It wasn’t just a clue. It was proof that Pietro had been near enough to bleed for this.
“Stop talking in circles,” Matteo snapped.
Pietro’s eyes flicked to Matteo’s pocket again. The note. He knew it was there. He’d been watching Matteo hold it like a talisman.
Pietro’s voice softened, and that softness was worse than the rasp. “If you hand it to them,” he said, “you’ll become their access point too.”
Elena’s head snapped toward him. “Don’t listen to him.”