Chapter 22 Celeste’s Bargain and Elena’s Risk
Celeste’s Bargain and Elena’s Risk
The interrogation room smelled like bleach that had given up and given in to old fear.
It clung to the air anyway, sharp enough to scrape the back of Elena’s throat when she breathed too deep.
The fluorescent lights didn’t flicker; they simply burned, relentless and colorless, turning the metal table into something that looked sterilized but felt poisoned.
Celeste sat across from Matteo’s shadow, wrists loose in the way of someone who knew how to make restraints look like theater.
Her hair was pinned neatly, her lips too calm for the bruising on one cheekbone.
When she looked at Elena, it wasn’t pity.
It was appraisal - like Elena was a document Celeste could still edit.
Matteo stood just outside the narrow strip of light over the door, jacket hanging open, sidearm concealed where it belonged.
Elena could feel the weight of him without turning her head.
He wasn’t fidgeting, wasn’t pacing. He was listening with every muscle, waiting for the next sound that didn’t belong in a room built for confession.
Celeste’s gaze slid to Elena’s phone on the table, the screen dark, the device inert in appearance. “You keep it off,” Celeste murmured. Her voice had the smoothness of money changing hands. “Good. It makes you look obedient.”
Elena didn’t touch her phone. She didn’t trust the way her own fingers wanted to reach for it, to check whether the tracking mechanism Matteo had warned her about was still alive in the world.
The last time Elena had felt that wrong pull - coordinates pinging, enemies shifting like they were reading her breath - her stomach had turned into a fist.
“I don’t care how I look,” Elena said, and the words came out steadier than she felt. She forced her focus on Celeste’s face, on the smallest tells. Celeste’s pupils weren’t dilated from fear. They were assessing, measuring, timing. “I care where the missing page is.”
Matteo’s head tilted a fraction. He didn’t speak, but Elena heard him anyway, the way his silence pressed into the spaces between her sentences.
The bargain Celeste had offered in the previous hold - authorization signatures, controlled contact, that thin thread of leverage - had already started to rot into something uglier.
Matteo had Celeste as a prisoner now. Elena needed the location of what Marzio had taken.
And Celeste knew exactly what Elena would trade to get it back.
Celeste leaned forward slightly, chair legs scraping once - too soft to be accidental. “You don’t understand what you’re asking for,” she said.
Elena’s skin tightened. “I understand enough. You’re the one who can tell me where it went.”
Celeste’s smile was small. It didn’t reach her eyes. “You want to know where Marzio hides the page. But that’s not the price.”
Matteo finally moved inside the light, just enough for his shadow to fall over Celeste’s hands.
The movement wasn’t aggressive. It was deliberate, a positioning that made Elena’s pulse spike anyway.
Matteo’s voice stayed low. “Tell her, Celeste. Or keep your mouth shut and watch me strip answers out of you in ways that don’t require your cooperation. ”
Celeste’s eyes flicked to Matteo. “That’s the thing, Matteo. You think this is about pain.” Her gaze returned to Elena. “It’s about consent. It’s about what you’re willing to give before you get to claim you were protecting her.”
Matteo’s jaw flexed. Elena felt heat at her collarbone, a flare of anger that didn’t know where to go. Celeste had said Matteo’s name like a blade, like she’d been holding it in her mouth.
Elena kept her voice flat. “You offered a bargain. I’m asking for the location. That’s the bargain.”
Celeste’s breath came out slow, controlled.
“Not the one I mean.” She shifted her wrists, and Elena noticed the faint marks where restraints had been removed and reattached.
Someone had handled Celeste carefully. Someone had ensured she remained intact enough to negotiate.
“You think Matteo is the only one receiving directives. You think the tracking you’re terrified of is only about you being watched. ”
Elena stared. Her throat tightened around the last word she wanted to say - no.
Celeste continued, unhurried. “The tracking tag doesn’t just move through space. It moves through relationships.” Her eyes dropped to Elena’s mouth for a heartbeat too long, as if she could read the shape of Elena’s thoughts. “And it uses closeness as a wire.”
Matteo’s gaze sharpened. “Say it plainly.”
Celeste’s smile turned brittle. “That missing page? Marzio didn’t just take it. He took it after someone ensured it would be recovered by the person most likely to expose herself for it.”
Elena’s stomach rolled. “That doesn’t make sense.”
“It does,” Celeste said softly. “Because you already did it once.”
Elena’s mind flashed - diesel smell in a cargo hold, the witness’s voice cutting off mid-sentence, Matteo’s shot ringing against metal, the way Elena’s hands had tried to hide the missing page even when her heart was screaming for truth.
Her voice had been recorded once already, proof she’d tried to use as leverage.
Matteo had stopped her from releasing it too soon.
Elena had hated that control. Now it felt like a trap that used her need to be believed.
Celeste’s eyes stayed on Elena. “Your recorded voice. It’s not just evidence. It’s a signal. It’s a key.”
Elena’s fingers curled against the edge of the table. “I didn’t know.”
Celeste’s gaze softened just enough to be cruel. “No. You never do. That’s why it works.”
Matteo’s hand came down on the table, palm flat, not a strike but a warning. His voice was calm in the way a gun barrel is calm. “Where is it.”
Celeste looked at him like she was considering which lie would survive longer. “If I give you the location, Elena keeps breathing long enough to regret it.”
Elena snapped, unable to stop herself. “Then give it.”
Celeste’s eyes flicked to the sidearm bulge beneath Matteo’s jacket. “You still think you can bargain with Marzio’s people using words.” Her lips parted. “You can. But you’ll have to pay in the only currency Elena actually has left.”
Elena’s breath snagged. She knew what Celeste meant before Celeste said it.
The bargain offered in the last conversation had been intimate in a way that made Elena’s blood go cold.
Elena had refused to imagine herself doing anything that could be twisted into leverage.
But Celeste wasn’t asking Elena to imagine.
Celeste was reminding her of the price of access.
Matteo’s voice tightened. “Celeste.”
Celeste leaned in, lowering her voice as if the walls were listening. “Matteo is loyal. That’s why he’s dangerous. He’ll take bullets for her, and the tracking mechanism will treat that as a connection. It will treat your proximity as consent.”
Elena’s nails bit into her palm. “What tracking mechanism?”
Celeste’s gaze moved to Elena’s phone again, then to Elena’s wrist where a faint bruise lingered from the last time she’d been grabbed hard enough to leave a mark.
“The one that triggers when your voice is stored and replayed. The one that pings coordinates when Elena’s recorded proof is paired with Matteo’s response.
” She smiled without warmth. “A wire made of emotion.”
Matteo’s eyes darkened. “You’re lying.”
Celeste’s head tilted. “Am I? Or is it just easier to believe the world is random when you’re trying to keep her safe?”
Elena felt sick. Matteo had been tracking directives on his phone, changing routes, making choices that felt like instincts but were probably something else - coded instructions layered over their reality.
Elena had assumed it was about hierarchy, about internal sabotage.
Now Celeste was describing something more personal, more intimate, something that didn’t care about logic.
Something that used their bond as a conduit.
Elena forced herself to speak. “Where. Is. The. Missing. Page.”
Celeste lifted her chin. “You want it like you want air. That hunger makes you predictable.” Her eyes moved between Elena and Matteo. “So here’s the bargain, Elena. I give you the location. You give me what I need from you to make it true.”
Matteo stepped closer, enough that Elena could feel the shift in temperature from his body heat. “What do you need.”
Celeste’s gaze locked on Elena. “A recorded voice - clean, unaltered, not the version you already used. Something you can’t take back.”
Elena’s pulse slammed. She understood the implication immediately. Clean recording meant deliberate consent. It meant her voice would be used as a trigger again, but this time, Celeste would control the context. Celeste would feed it into the tracking mechanism like a key into a lock.
Elena’s throat tightened. “No.”
Celeste’s smile sharpened. “Then no location. No page. Marzio keeps it. Matteo keeps protecting you. And the next time the enemy gets coordinates from your bond, it won’t be an interrogation room.”
Matteo’s voice cut in, low and controlled. “She doesn’t decide for herself anymore.”
Elena’s head snapped toward him. Her anger flared so fast it almost burned away the fear. “You don’t get to decide that.”
Matteo’s eyes held hers, hard enough to pin her in place. “Celeste is stalling. If she believes you’ll comply, she’ll keep moving the goalposts until she’s satisfied.”
Elena’s voice turned rough. “Or until she’s dead.”
Celeste’s brows lifted. “Now you’re thinking like a woman who understands the cost of bargaining.”
Elena swallowed. Her mind raced through the last few hours: Pietro’s standoff, the compromised directives, the way the transfer order had been routed like a trap.
The missing page had been the one thing she could still retrieve that felt like justice.
Losing it wasn’t just losing paper. It was losing proof that could burn down corruption.