2026-11-03 23:12:14
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Chapter 19
Vittorio accepted without hesitation, and Trent sent his two men in first.The nod had barely left Vittorio's chin when Trent stepped back behind the felt and jerked his head at the wiry man. A man with a broken wrist had never planned to throw a single punch. Trent had planned to watch.No camera hung over the till, and the only witnesses were a dozen half-drunk dockhands who would never agree on what they had seen. Whatever happened here tonight, Dutch would carry the story back to the Maybach, and Vittorio wanted the old man to hear every word.Vittorio slipped off the navy jacket and laid it over a bar stool, because Celine had chosen it and he did not mean to bleed on it.Then he stopped holding the cold back. Wind moved through the closed bar, and the bottles chattered on the shelves behind the counter. The old fishing nets swayed from the ceiling, and every breath in the room turned white.Heat bloomed along his spine, and gold light pushed through the back of his white shirt.
Chapter 18
At nine sharp, Vittorio pushed open the door of The Anchor, and the jukebox stopped.The Anchor was a dockside bar that smelled of fried fish and spilled beer, with old fishing nets nailed to the ceiling and drizzle ticking against the windows. A dozen dockhands sat along the counter, and every one of them turned to look at the man in the navy suit. Behind the counter, a gray-bearded bartender stopped drying a glass halfway and set it down without a sound.Sofia was not there. Vittorio checked the corner booths, the stools, and the dark corridor that led to the restrooms, and he found only strangers.His hand found the brass key in his pocket. That morning, he had told Sofia that everyone in Leviathan was a suspect, and now the bar she had chosen held no Sofia at all. Had she sent him into another ravine with a smile and a clove cigarette?At the pool table in the back sat Trent, with his arm still in the sling and a beer in his good hand. Two men flanked him. One was wiry, with a sha
Chapter 17
Grandpa Walter rasped from his hospital bed. "You came. Diane said you wouldn't dare."After the garage, Vittorio had driven home to Mercer Street and slept for three hours on Teresa's old couch. Robert's boy had left the electric bike chained behind the laundromat with a note that read Brake squeaks. You were right. Friday was his night off, so before The Anchor at nine, Vittorio put the navy suit back on and drove to Halden General.Walter Carter looked smaller than he had at Christmas, with an oxygen tube running under his nose. His big dockworker's hands lay on the blanket, spotted and still, worn down by forty years of hauling rope.Vittorio pulled a chair to the bed, took an orange from the bag he had brought, and peeled it in one long spiral, the way Walter had taught him at that Christmas party.Last Christmas, while the Carters laughed in the dining room, Walter had wandered into the kitchen and picked up a towel. He had dried glasses beside Vittorio for an hour in silence, a
Chapter 16
Vittorio knew the voice before he knew the face. "Sofia."The woman pushed herself off the Valkyrie's fender. She was lean in black cargo pants and a fitted jacket, with dark hair cut blunt at her jaw, and she smelled faintly of cloves. Her boots made no sound at all on the concrete.In his last clear memory of her, Sofia Daidalos was a twenty-one-year-old officer who followed him across a frozen training yard with a clipboard.She used to correct his reports in red ink and tell him that his handwriting would get them both killed. Once, she had stayed awake for two nights rewriting a supply list he had ruined with coffee, and she had never let him forget it. Now she stood in a parking garage in Port Halden, seven years older, looking at him the way people looked into an opened grave.A thin white scar crossed her chin, and Vittorio did not recognize it. Someone had cut her during the years he had lost.Her eyes went wet for one second. Then she blinked, and the soldier came back into
Chapter 15
"Arianna. I didn't expect you here already." Celine's voice was flat, and the whole lounge went quiet.The two bodyguards stopped one step behind her, broad men in dark suits with earpieces coiled behind their ears. Celine wore charcoal today, a jacket cut sharp at the shoulders, and her hair was pinned up so tightly that not one strand moved.Arianna kept hold of his arm. She tilted her head and smiled around the lollipop, sweet as a cat in a dairy."Celine, darling, I came early for once. Look what I found in the lobby, wrestling your security guards. Maybe he's the man you've been hiding from Adrian all these months?"A few executives stopped pretending to look at their phones. Vittorio felt every eye in the room land on him and slide toward Celine, waiting to see which woman would win.Arianna had meant it as a joke about hiding him from Adrian, yet the joke sat closer to the truth than anyone in this lounge could know.Celine did not even glance at Arianna's hand. Her gray eyes w
Chapter 14
Every executive who had smirked at Vittorio now stared at him with envy.The woman in the gray dress lowered her phone, and the striped-tie executive suddenly found his coffee very interesting. Arianna steered Vittorio past the turnstile without slowing, and Boone pulled the gate open for them with a deep bow.Behind the reception desk, a guard held the private elevator for them, and when the doors closed on the white lobby, the noise of the fountain disappeared.Arianna leaned against the mirrored wall and rolled the lollipop to the other side of her mouth. She studied him the way a jeweler studied a stone."You're no courier. Couriers look at the floor numbers, and you looked at the emergency hatch, the camera in the corner, and the button panel, in that order. You even stood where the doors can't hide you. So what kind of courier checks every exit in an elevator?"Vittorio had done all three without noticing he was doing them. Six months at a gate had dulled his manners, and one mo
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