Chapter 18 #3
“Come closer. The microphone is directional.”
He should have recognized the trap.
His pride was louder.
Gianni stepped into frame.
The terminal marked a secondary face and began tracking it.
Donatella looked at him.
“Do you believe Yelena entered an engagement with you voluntarily?”
“It was her destiny.”
“That was not my question.”
“Our families arranged the match.”
“Did she agree?”
“She would have.”
“Would have?”
“If Salvatore had not interfered.”
My hands went cold.
Donatella tilted her head.
“And now?”
“Now she will honor the arrangement.”
“Voluntarily?”
Gianni looked at me.
I saw the moment he chose humiliation over caution.
“She had a chance at voluntary.”
Donatella waited.
He stepped closer.
“I would have given her a comfortable life,” he said. “Houses. Clothes. Staff. She could have played at authority for as long as she behaved.”
The red recording light remained steady.
“And because she did not behave?” Donatella asked.
Gianni’s eyes stayed on mine.
“Now she signs anyway. And afterward, she will be my property.”
The room went very still.
A soft electronic tone came from the equipment case.
Donatella looked down.
The hardware bar reached fifty-eight percent.
She tapped one finger against the closed edge of the case.
Twice.
Tap.
Tap.
I did not understand it.
Gianni did not seem to notice.
Donatella leaned toward the microphone.
“For clarity,” she said, “you have just stated that Yelena’s quality of life after this transaction depends on obedience to you.”
“You are being tedious.”
“I am being defensible.”
She turned back to me.
“Read the next clause.”
I did.
Slowly.
Carefully.
Somewhere beneath my fear, an idea began to move.
Donatella had brought the genuine token.
She had insulted me. Exposed me. Claimed she had sold her brothers.
But she had also cleared the guards.
Put Gianni on camera.
Made him confess.
Tap.
Tap.
I looked at her hand.
Her red nails rested against the case.
She did not look at me.
I returned to the document.
Forty-two minutes remained on the deadline.
The hardware bar showed sixty-three percent.
I did not know what waited at one hundred.
For the first time since the ambulance doors closed, I wondered whether Gianni knew either.
At ninety-eight percent, Gianni began to smile. Not the little polished expression he used in public.
This one showed teeth.
The terminal fan screamed beneath the desk. Green code moved through a status window too quickly for me to read. The proxy document remained unsigned.
That seemed important.
Gianni did not notice.
“Stand when it finishes,” he told me. “You will read the declaration directly into the camera.”
“No.”
“You are running out of ways to be interesting.”
Donatella watched the progress bar.
Ninety-nine.
Her hand closed around the edge of the equipment case.
The terminal chimed.
One hundred percent.
Every camera indicator in the corporate suite went dark.
The overhead lights flashed red.
Locks slammed throughout the facility.
One after another.
Steel striking steel.
Gianni’s smile disappeared.
“What did you do?”
The loading-bay explosion answered him.
The floor jumped beneath my chair. Glass walls flexed. A heavy impact rolled through the archive level and struck my chest from the inside. The technicians shouted. An alarm began to shriek.
White suppressant burst from vents beyond the suite. It poured into the archive corridors in dense sheets, swallowing shelves and armed men. Shadows moved behind it. Doors closed between them.
Gianni grabbed Donatella’s wrist. She slammed the equipment case shut on his hand.
Bone struck steel. He screamed.
She hit the lid again.
Harder.
Gianni stumbled back, clutching his fingers.
Donatella tore the token’s upper housing free. A compact pistol lay fitted into the foam beneath it. She drew it and fired once.
The nearest technician dropped.
The other ran for the steel door.
It would not open.
Donatella kicked his knee from behind, drove him face-first into the wall, and struck him with the pistol.
Then she caught my shoulder and shoved me behind the terminal.
“Down.”
I went down.
Gianni stared at her.
“You bitch.”
She aimed at his chest.
“You can call me Donatella,” she said. “My brothers are exceptionally irritating, but I don’t sell them. I never would.”
My breath left me.
Another explosion struck the far corridor.
Gunfire ripped through the archive level. Short controlled bursts. Men shouting. The blunt crash of bodies hitting shelves.
Gianni drew his pistol.
Donatella fired. He twisted aside. The bullet broke the glass wall behind him.
I crawled beneath the desk.
The blue light from the terminal washed over my hands. The cancellation instrument remained open. No signature. No proxy.
The progress bar had never been the transfer.
Donatella fired again.
Gianni dropped behind a cabinet and shot back. Glass burst above my head. I covered my face as fragments scattered across the carpet.
A voice roared beyond the steel door.
Tonio.
I could not make out the words. I knew the voice.
Hope hit so hard it hurt.
Then another sound rose through the alarms.
Low. Furious. Coming closer.
Sal.
I pressed one fist against my mouth.
Donatella glanced toward me.
“They got us,” she said.
The steel door shuddered under an impact.
Gianni looked at it.
For the first time since he had climbed into the SUV beside me, he looked afraid.
Gianni shot the terminal before Donatella could shoot him.
The screen burst inward. Sparks sprayed across the desk. The camera shattered. Burning plastic filled the suite with a bitter smell.
He came over the cabinet before I could move.
One arm caught me across the chest. The pistol jammed beneath my jaw. His injured hand shook against my shoulder.
“Drop it,” he told Donatella. She kept her weapon aimed.
Gianni dragged me backward.
The barrel pressed harder into the soft place below my chin.
“Drop it.”
Donatella lowered the gun.
Not to the floor.
Enough.
Gianni kicked open a narrow panel behind the records cabinet. A dark passage waited beyond it, built between the corporate suite and the archive stacks.
A private exit.
Of course he had one.
He hauled me through.
My shoes slipped on concrete. His forearm crushed my chest. I clawed at it once, and the pistol dug into my skin.
“Do that again,” he breathed against my ear, “and Salvatore finds you without a face.”
The passage opened into the archives.
Suppressant rolled across the floor, thick around our ankles. Red emergency lights pulsed above the shelves. The alarm cut through my skull.
A guard waited near the western aisle with a rifle.
“Tunnel,” Gianni ordered.
The man moved ahead of us.
Donatella came through the hidden panel at a distance. Her pistol remained low.
She had no clear shot.
Gianni had built my body into a shield.
Gunfire sounded to our left.
Then Tonio’s voice tore through the white air.
“Western corridor clear!”
The guard swung his rifle toward the sound.
Gianni changed direction. He dragged me between two archive rows, driving me ahead of him.
“Move.”
I stumbled over a box.
His arm tightened.
“Move, ptichka.”
“Don’t call me that.”
He laughed against my hair.
The sound was wrong now. Breathless. Fraying.
“You still think he can keep you?”
A burst of gunfire struck the shelves behind us. Metal screamed. Boxes split open. Paper spun into the suppressant. Then I heard him.
“Lena!”
Sal’s voice.
My name carried through steel and alarms and men dying in the dark. My knees nearly folded. Every part of me wanted to answer. To turn. To fight blindly toward the sound.
Gianni felt it.
The gun pressed deeper beneath my jaw.
“Call out,” he whispered. “Let him come close enough to watch.”
I breathed through my nose.
Sal called me again.
Closer.
“Yelena!”
“I’m here!” I shouted.
Gianni jerked me backward so hard my head struck his shoulder.
“I will kill you,” he hissed. “I will kill you before I let him take you back.”
“Gianni,” Donatella called.
She stood at the end of the archive row, half-hidden by white suppressant. Her pistol pointed toward the floor.
“The proxy completed.”
Gianni went still.
I did too.
Donatella held up the equipment case.
“The token finished authentication before you destroyed the terminal. The transfer went through.”
It was a lie.
I had seen the screen.
No signature. No facial declaration. No transfer.
Gianni could not know what I knew.
Greed moved through him.
“What?”
“You won,” Donatella said. “The proxy is registered. The trust cancellation is pending server confirmation.”
“Show me.”
“I can’t. You destroyed the terminal.”
His injured fingers flexed against my shoulder.
Donatella took one step closer.
“If you kill Yelena, her death invalidates the live authorization. The court freezes everything.”
Gianni’s head turned.
Only a little.
Enough to look at her.