Chapter 3
Selene
The restaurant is called Cavallo.
White tablecloths. Crystal stemware.
The kind of place where a single entrée costs more than my monthly grocery budget used to be and the waitstaff moves like ghosts—present when needed, invisible when not.
It's also a front for laundering six figures a month through inflated wine purchases.
I know this because I spent two months at Harvard mapping the financial structures of criminal organizations for a research paper that my professor called "disturbingly thorough." I didn't tell him I was studying for a career that doesn't appear in any law school brochure.
Cassius sits across from me in a charcoal-hued suit, looking like he was born in a Michelin-starred restaurant.
Next to him is Vincent—silver-haired, sharp-eyed, watching me with the careful neutrality of a man reserving judgment.
Peter and Paul flank the table's ends like matching bookends of who’d kill you before dessert, Peter with his scarred eyebrow and Paul with the split through his lip.
They're all looking at me.
Three days ago, I was on a plane from Boston.
Now I'm sitting at a table with four men who've collectively killed more people than I've had law professors, and the maitre d' just poured me a glass of wine that costs three hundred dollars a bottle.
I take a sip. It's fucking excellent.
"The problem," Vincent says, sliding a folder across the white tablecloth, "is the Galerie Noir."
I open the folder.
Property records, tax filings, bank statements.
The Galerie Noir is one of Cassius's art galleries, a sleek space in the Arts District that launders money through inflated appraisals and private sales. I scan the documents, and the issue jumps out within thirty seconds.
"You're using the same appraiser for every piece." I look up. "Every single transaction in the last eighteen months goes through Howard Clement. Same guy, same inflated numbers, same rubber stamp."
Vincent's expression doesn't change, but something shifts behind his eyes. "And?"
"And if anyone at the IRS pulls that thread, the whole gallery unravels. One appraiser, consistent overvaluation, no independent verification—it's a textbook laundering pattern. A first-year forensic accountant could flag it."
Silence at the table.
Peter and Paul exchange a glance, and with it the kind of wordless communication twins develop, entire conversations compressed into a raised eyebrow.
Cassius sips his whiskey. Watching me. Always watching me.
"What would you suggest?" Vincent asks. His tone is careful. Not dismissive—he's too smart for that. But testing. Measuring.
"Three appraisers, rotated on a quarterly basis.
Different firms, no overlapping clients.
Vary the valuation ranges—not every piece needs to be a masterpiece.
Some should come in low. That's what a legitimate gallery looks like: inconsistent, market-driven, human.
" I close the folder. "I can have a list of appraisers who won't ask questions by the end of the week.
Two of them did appraisal work for a partner I interned under. He'd vouch for me."
More silence.
The restaurant hums around us. Clinking silverware, murmured conversations, a couple laughing two tables over, oblivious to the fact that they're eating dinner in the middle of a criminal strategy session.
"She's right," Vincent says finally. He doesn't look at me when he says it. He looks at Cassius. "It's a vulnerability."
"I know," Cassius says. Like he already saw it. Maybe he did. Maybe this was the test. Not whether I could spot the problem, but whether I could solve it in a way that earned Vincent's respect.
I take another sip of wine. "What else?"
Vincent stares at me for a moment, then he reaches into his briefcase and pulls out three more folders.
Good.
We work through lunch and into the afternoon.
The restaurant empties around us.
The manager doesn't ask us to leave, just keeps the wine coming and the staff at a respectful distance.
Cassius owns the building. Probably owns the manager, too.
By the third folder, Vincent has stopped testing me and started asking my opinion.
The shift is subtle. A change in the angle of his questions, the way he waits for my answer instead of immediately offering his own.
Peter catches it. I see the corner of his mouth twitch.
The third folder is a real estate development on the east side.
Luxury condos being built with laundered money, but the permits are stalled because a city councilman is holding them hostage for a bigger bribe.
"How much is he asking?" I say.
"Double what we originally agreed," Vincent says. "Two hundred thousand."
"Don't pay it."
Four sets of eyes on me. Even Paul, who's been quiet as a statue for two hours, tilts his head.
"Councilman Rivera has a son at Columbia," I say.
"Pre-law. The son applied for a summer clerkship at the DA's office three weeks ago.
I know because I processed the application.
" I pause. Let that land. "One phone call from me, and that application moves to the top of the pile.
Rivera gets his son's career boosted, we get our permits, and it costs us nothing.
Better—it puts Rivera in our debt instead of the other way around. "
The silence this time is different. Heavier. Impressed.
"You processed the application," Vincent repeats.
"I process a lot of applications. Funny how much access a low-level assistant has to high-level futures."
Cassius hasn't spoken in twenty minutes.
He's just been sitting there, whiskey in hand, watching me work.
When I glance at him now, the expression on his face isn't surprise. It's satisfying. The look of a man whose investment just returned triple.
"Make the call," he says.
I pull out my phone. Three minutes later, the Rivera situation is handled.
No money changed hands. No threats. Just a favor, strategically placed, that ties a city councilman's family to Cassius Wolfe's organization without the councilman even realizing it.
I set my phone down. "Done."
Vincent looks at Cassius, and something passes between them.
"She'll need access to the financial systems," Vincent says. It’s less a question than an acknowledgment.
Cassius nods. "Set it up."
That's it. No ceremony. No grand declaration.
Just a door opening that won't close again. I've been in his world for three days, and I've just been handed keys to the kingdom's back office.
I finish my wine and don't let my hand shake.
The afternoon is a blur of logistics.
Vincent walks me through the legitimate business portfolio.
The galleries, the restaurants, the real estate arm, the import/export company that moves art and antiquities and occasionally things that aren't art or antiquities.
He's methodical, precise, and grudgingly thorough. He doesn't waste words and he doesn't repeat himself, and by the third hour I realize he's not briefing me…he's onboarding me.
Peter drives us between locations. The gallery first—sleek white walls, enormous canvases, a manager named Diane who takes one look at me standing next to Cassius and rearranges her entire body language from casual to deferential.
Then the import warehouse at the docks, where shipping containers sit in rows like steel coffins and men in work boots stop talking when we enter.
Then a restaurant in Midtown—different from Cavallo, louder, more casual, a place where cash moves under the table during weekend brunch service.
At each stop, the same thing happens. People see me. They look at the collar. They look at Cassius. They recalculate.
I'm not arm candy. I'm not a girlfriend being given a tour. I'm asking questions about invoice structures and customs paperwork and quarterly tax filings, and every answer I get, I file away and cross-reference with what I already know.
By the time we leave the last restaurant, Vincent is walking beside me instead of behind me.
Small thing, yet an enormous shift.
"You'll need your own office," he says as we reach the car. "I'll have something set up in the suite by tomorrow."
The suite. Cassius's private office space. Multiple rooms, high security, the nerve center of everything that matters. Not a desk in some back room. A seat at the table.
"Next to his?" I ask.
Vincent gives me a look that says he's still deciding how he feels about that. "Adjacent."
Peter opens the car door for me.
As I slide in, he says quietly, so only I hear, "Paul owes me fifty bucks."
"For what?"
"He bet you'd last a week before Vincent shut you out." Peter almost smiles. "I bet you'd have him eating out of your hand by day three."
"And?"
"And you did it in an afternoon."
I don't smile, but something warm settles in my chest, and I tuck it away for later.
The call comes at nine p.m.
I'm in Cassius's bedroom at his penthouse—our bedroom now, apparently, given that a second set of toiletries has materialized in the bathroom and half the closet has been cleared for the clothes he had tailored in my exact measurements.
He's in his office, on a call with someone whose voice carries the clipped cadence of bad news.
I don't eavesdrop, not yet…but then my phone buzzes.
The screen reads Emilia, followed by a string of heart emojis that feel like they belong to a different lifetime.
I stare at it for three rings. Four.
The old Selene would have answered immediately, breathless and grateful for the connection to her normal life.
The old Selene needed Emilia the way a drowning person needs a life raft—someone bright and good and uncomplicated to remind her that the world wasn't all darkness and blood.
I answer on the fifth ring.
"Oh my God, you're alive!" Emilia's voice is high and warm and achingly familiar. "I've been calling you for like three days. Where are you? Are you back from Boston? Please tell me you're back because I need brunch and gossip and your face immediately."