DARIO
TWENTY
I notice it first in the way Marco’s infirmary assistant moves when I come in to resupply.
There’s a fractional hesitation in Fratelli when he looks up from what he’s doing, a brief recalibration, the expression of someone who has received new information about a person they’re now looking at.
He covers it fast. He’s been doing this a long time. But I’ve been doing it longer.
“How can I help you today, Spinelli?”
“A bottle of hydrocodone—a full one this time.”
“I always give you a full one,” he grumbles as he turns to the painkiller stash. When he faces me, there’s still that look. The one that says he knows something is wrong. “Here you go. Count ’em, if you want.”
“We’re good. Gotta meet up with Marco, anyway.”
The slightest width in those beady eyes tells me everything. “Good luck.”
When I get to his office, Marco is clipped during the supply visit in a way that has a distinct texture. Not irritated—Marco irritated is demonstrative, pointed, snarky, and arrives with a lecture and a look.
This is quieter than that. He sits there, glaring. “Just came for the drugs, eh? No time for social visits? Must be that girl of yours. Tight leash?”
“Tight body.”
He almost laughs. “Yeah. I’m sure of it. I’ve seen the pictures.”
His casual way of letting me know he’s been surveilling me. Not that I’m surprised. I’d do the same if I didn’t trust my doctor.
“Anything I can do for you, Marco?”
He stares for a minute. “No. I think you’ve done all you can for me.”
Marco’s patience with my situation has run out. I don’t need him to tell me this directly, but that was close enough. I’ve been reading this bastard for years.
We have to move. Now.
I tell Lena I need her and Opal out of the penthouse for the day—not why, just that I’m having some security upgrades done and I don’t want them underfoot. It’s not entirely a lie.
Lena looks at me for a moment with the eyes she uses when she suspects I’m not giving her the full version of something, and then she nods. “Sure. And at some point, you’ll trust me enough to tell me what’s going on, right?”
“It’s not a matter of trust—”
“Uh-huh.” She books the science museum downtown and tells Opal, who responds with the volume of a child who has just been given news of transcendent personal importance.
They leave at nine. I stand at the window and watch the street until my car is out of sight, and then I begin.
I start on the exterior windows, which I check every three days as a standard practice—the original latch, the integrity of the frame, whether any of my monitoring strips have been disturbed.
Everything on the north and east sides is undisturbed.
On the south side, second window from the balcony door, I find it.
The latch lever has been taped down. Not obviously—not visible unless you’re looking for it—but very deliberately.
A small strip of clear tape, positioned to hold the lever in the locked position, so the window appears closed on my security system while still being able to be opened from the outside with the right tool and a little pressure.
Someone was on the exterior of my building. Someone who knew exactly where my security sensors are and how to deceive them. Both of these details require expensive skills.
I stand at the window for a moment and breathe.
This window is on the fourteenth floor, and the adjacent structure doesn’t provide a viable approach, meaning either a rappel from the roof or a window-cleaning platform adapted for off-hours use.
Either requires access, planning, and familiarity with the building’s layout and security architecture.
This was not opportunistic. This was someone who received intelligence on my setup and used it. That intelligence came from inside Marco’s organization. There’s no other source.
I take the tape off with tweezers, place it in a small evidence bag, because it’s a habit, and habits in this profession exist for reasons. Then I begin a full sweep—every window, every door, every entry point, every surface where a device could be placed that I would not have placed myself.
I work methodically and without hurry, because hurry introduces error, and error in this context is unacceptable.
An hour and twenty minutes. I find nothing else.
No listening devices, no secondary tampering, no indication that entry was actually made beyond the one taped latch.
This was reconnaissance—someone building a map, testing the approach, confirming what works. Recon and access.
I reinforce the three windows that are most viable as entry points. Two more sensors that are not on any documented system are linked to an alert that goes to my phone rather than any central panel. New entry codes. New everything.
Then I sit at my desk and think.
Marco knows about the taped window, or authorized it, or looked the other way when someone with access to his organization’s intelligence arranged it. No one else makes sense. It has to be him.
I’ve seen him do this before.
The moment he decides one of his own is out, he doesn’t waste time fixing the situation. He moves on them like a beast in heat until it’s over. There’s no severance package in the mob.
Not unless you count having something important severed.
That evening I call Renzo.
My brother has been in a federal correctional facility for four years on a conviction that I still believe was half constructed—Renzo was not innocent, but the prosecution’s version of what he did bore a creative relationship to the actual events.
But my brother is also an idiot about things sometimes, and there was only so much I could do to help. I can’t change him. It has to be his choice to stop walking on the same needles.
He’s well-connected inside and carries a burner phone that the guards don’t attempt to confiscate, for reasons I’ve chosen not to examine closely.
“Dario, what’s up, man? Long time, no hear.”
“The wind outside has changed.”
He goes quiet. I catch bits of conversation around him, which means prying ears. “Yeah, I heard that. Do you think it’ll be a big storm?”
“Possibly. Probably. You catch the news?”
“No. What’s up?”
“There’s a hurricane coming. Those idiots at the weather center are up to the letter M now.”
He’s quiet again. “The Big M, huh? Spooky.” His sarcasm is false bravado. He knows exactly what I’m telling him.
“They should name them something scary, like Hurricane Tax Fraud.”
“Hey! I didn’t know my accountant was pulling that shit.”
I smirk, can’t help it. My idiot baby brother, taken down like Capone. “Just make sure you’re facing the right way when the wind blows.”
“How bad do you think it’ll be? No bullshit, Dar.”
“Cat four or five, easy.”
“Fuck. You think it’ll hit the family?” He means Lena and Opal. Renzo has been receiving letters from Opal for six weeks—she started writing to him after I mentioned I had a brother.
“Being handled.”
He’s quiet for a moment. “You need anything from my end?”
“Not yet. Watch your back. That hurricane could land in the prison yard or anywhere else. You call me if the wind reaches you.” That’s half the point of this call—Marco has a long reach, and it goes all the way inside of Renzo’s prison.
“Will do. But don’t worry about me. I’ve been beefing up, working out. These guys, they know who does what around here. They’ve got my back.”
I swallow. Not sure why I feel weird hearing that.
No. I do. I don’t want someone else to have my brother’s back.
I clear my throat so he doesn’t hear it in my tone. “Good. Somebody should have your back, and fuck knows you aren’t careful enough.”
“Yeah, yeah. You either, by the way.”
“Talk later.”
“You better.”
When we hang up, I’m not sure how to feel or what to think. All I know is, I’ll feel better when I see Lena.
For about three minutes. Then, I have to send her and Opal away.
That evening Lena reads to Opal in the living room while I sit in my office with the lights low, going through contingencies the way I go through everything—methodically, without rushing, working through the variables in sequence.
I can’t do it. Can’t send her away.
The sound of her voice comes through the wall. I’ve memorized the cadence of it without meaning to. I know the slightly theatrical quality she gives it for the characters, the way she lets the suspense build before she turns the page.
Marco’s reach is wide and it’s deep and it’s been built over the years through the patient accumulation of debts and leverage and the kind of loyalty that’s really just well-managed fear.
I can’t guarantee protecting Lena and Opal from it completely.
The taped window makes that clear. What I can offer is preparation, vigilance, and the willingness to act before I’m acted against.
I know the shape of what’s coming. I don’t know the timing, and timing in these situations is what separates a managed problem from a crisis. I need more information before I move.
The Ed angle—the pocketed cash, the secret war chest, the angle against Marco—is still developing. I need to know more about what Ed is building before I decide whether to use it and how.
I stay in my office until Opal’s light goes out. Then I go to the kitchen, put water on, and make two cups of tea.
Lena is on the couch with her book. She looks up when I set the tea on the table beside her.
Something in her face does the slight softening it does when she’s genuinely pleased rather than just polite, and she says thank you and picks up the cup.
I sit beside her. Her shoulder is against mine. She goes back to reading.
I don’t want to lose this. Not any of it. It’s cozy and comfortable and freeing in a way I never knew before Lena came into my life. Willingly or not.
But she stays here willingly now, and I want to believe that means something good.
I drink my tea. I watch the door. I don’t tell her what I found today, because telling her would mean explaining what it implies and what I’m going to do about it. That conversation requires a clarity I don’t have yet.
When I have it, I’ll have it with her. For now I sit beside her in the warm living room and drink my tea and let her think the apartment is as safe as it looks.
I’ll make sure it gets there.