Chapter 5 Rigged #2
"I don't know yet. But I intend to find out, because whoever's running fake inspectors through your building is either trying to make you think it's me, which is a problem for both of us, or they're circling your business independently, which is a different problem entirely.
" Matteo picked up her laptop from the counter, turning it toward himself with a raised eyebrow that asked permission before he actually took it, and pulled up something on his own phone to cross-reference against her citation codes.
"Give me twenty minutes. I can tell you exactly which of these violations are salvageable and which ones you're wasting your time disputing. "
"I don't need you to fix my citations."
"I'm not fixing anything. I'm reading a document faster than you can at four in the morning on no sleep.
" He didn't look up from the screen, already cross-referencing something with the focused efficiency she recognized from her own work an hour ago.
"Consider it professional courtesy between people who understand exactly how ugly this district gets when someone decides to fight dirty. "
Del wanted to argue, wanted to throw him out of her kitchen on principle alone, and instead found herself sinking back down onto the floor beside her printouts, too tired to manufacture the energy a real fight would require.
Sienna caught her eye across the kitchen, one eyebrow raised in a silent question Del had no intention of answering out loud.
Twenty minutes later, Matteo had confirmed her instinct on the ice machine citation, flagged one additional violation she'd missed entirely as legitimate and fixable within the hour, and dismissed two others as citing code sections that had been repealed eighteen months ago.
"Whoever wrote this list either used an outdated template or doesn't actually know Miami-Dade's current commercial code," he said, sliding the sheet back across the counter toward her. "That's not the profile of a professional operator. That's someone improvising."
"That's not comforting."
"It should be. Someone amateur is easier to trace than someone competent.
" He straightened, and Del became abruptly aware of how close they'd ended up standing over the counter, close enough that the citation sheet between them had become almost incidental, close enough that the kitchen's fluorescent lighting stripped away every bit of polish either of them usually wore into a room together.
"You look like you're about to fall over. "
"I've got four hours until doors open."
"You've got three hours and forty minutes, and you're not going to make good decisions on the remaining ones running on nothing but adrenaline."
"Is that concern I'm hearing?"
"Call it professional interest in you not losing your license over a paperwork error you're too tired to catch.
" His voice had gone quieter, rougher at the edges, and Del felt the exhaustion in her chest reorganize itself into something that had nothing to do with sleep deprivation.
Sienna, tactfully or not, had disappeared toward the walk-in cooler again on some errand that didn't strictly require her presence there.
"You showed up at four in the morning to help me fix a citation list you didn't even create," Del said. "That's not strategy. That's something else."
"Maybe I just don't like watching amateurs make my war with you look sloppier than it is."
"That's not what this is, and we both know it."
Matteo didn't answer right away, and the silence between them stretched long enough that Del could hear the club's industrial refrigeration hum through the wall, the distant creak of Sienna moving crates around in the cooler, her own pulse loud in her ears in a kitchen that suddenly felt too small for the amount of space he took up standing three feet away from her.
Neither of them moved to close the distance. Neither of them moved to widen it either.
"You should get some sleep before doors open," he said finally, voice low, and something in the careful neutrality of it told her he'd chosen those words specifically because the honest ones were too dangerous to say out loud in a kitchen at five in the morning with nothing left between them but exhaustion and proximity.
"I will."
"You won't."
"Probably not."
A ghost of something that might have been a smile crossed his face, gone before it fully formed, and he stepped back first, putting professional distance between them with visible effort.
"Fix the second violation. It's a five-minute fix if you use the emergency supplier line instead of your standard one.
I'll have someone send you the contact."
"I don't need your contact."
"Take it anyway."
He left without waiting for her to argue further, footsteps unhurried through the empty club, and Del stood alone in the fluorescent-lit kitchen listening to the front door close behind him, her whole body still tuned to the space he'd occupied like a held note nobody had released yet.
Sienna reappeared from the cooler exactly thirty seconds later, eyebrows raised, arms crossed. "So."
"Don't."
"I didn't say anything."
"You were about to."
"I was absolutely about to." Sienna grabbed her coffee, cold now, and drank it anyway, watching Del with the specific patience of someone who had all the time in the world and knew exactly how to use silence as pressure.
"He showed up at four in the morning to help you with a citation he didn't even file. In a henley. Looking like that."
"He wanted to make sure I didn't blame him for something he didn't do."
"Sure. That's definitely the only reason.
" Sienna set the mug down and pushed off the counter, already moving toward the printouts still scattered across the floor.
"Come on. Three hours and thirty minutes until doors open, and I refuse to let whatever that was distract us from actually opening tonight. "
Del gathered the last of her paperwork, hands steadier now than they'd been an hour ago, though the rest of her felt anything but settled.
Somewhere three blocks north, Matteo was probably back at Obsidian by now, back behind his own desk, back in the register of cold calculation that had defined every interaction between them until tonight.
She didn't believe, not fully, that he'd shown up here purely out of professional interest in a fair fight.
But she also couldn't make herself believe the alternative either, that a man who'd spent two weeks trying to gut her license and steal her staff had suddenly developed a conscience about fake health citations at four in the morning.
Whatever it actually was, she had a launch night to save and no more time to spend standing in an empty kitchen wondering about it.