Chapter One
I’m on my knees scrubbing under the utility sink when the summons comes.
It doesn’t come from Marcella directly. She never comes to the basement herself. One of the staff girls appears in the doorway, barely looking at me. “Your father wants you in his study.”
I wipe my hands on the damp rag and set it on the edge of the basin. My fingers are raw from the bleach. Two hours of work, and the stain’s still there. It’ll still be there tomorrow. Someone else’s mess, left for me because no one else wants to touch it.
Up the service stairs. I haven’t used the main staircase in years unless company comes and the family needs to show that all its daughters are present and accounted for. Which rarely happens.
The study door is heavy old wood. I knock once and wait.
“Come.”
My father, Alvise, sits behind his desk, which had been his father’s desk before him. The brass lamp casts green light over the leather blotter, his hands, his signet ring. He looks like something carved rather than raised. Silvering hair swept back from his brow. Thick brows hood his eyes, and his heavy jaw is set in that still way that makes visitors lower their voices before he ever speaks. He wears a cardigan over a pressed white shirt, sleeves buttoned at the wrist. Everything about him says established. Inherited. Guarded.
His wife, Marcella, stands by the window, her silhouette sharp against the pale curtain. Her auburn hair is pulled into a low twist, not a strand out of place. She has the kind of beauty that makes other women feel underdressed. High cheekbones, narrow mouth, olive skin that age has only refined. She wears cream silk and a gold bracelet that catches the light when she moves her wrist. Nothing about her is soft by accident.
They don’t tell me to sit. I stand just inside the door, hands at my sides, and wait.
“Close it,” Alvise says.
I pull the door shut behind me.
He looks at me the way he looks at everything that enters his territory: with appraisal. What is this worth. What can it do. What will it cost me.
“You’ve been assigned to serve at an event tomorrow night.”
Serve. Not attend.
“Where?” My voice comes out quiet. It always does in this room.
“Cristiano Sorrenti’s home. Private dinner. Small guest list, high security, tight staff rotation.” He leans back in the leather chair. “We have access to the temporary serving positions.”
Sorrenti. The name presses against my ribs. One of the families in the city. Not one of our allies.
Marcella turns from the window. Her eyes settle on the raw skin around my fingers. Cataloging. Finding the faults. “You’ll wear the uniform. Hair pinned back. No jewelry. No speaking unless addressed. You’re staff for the evening.”
“You’ll be given a vial before you leave,” Alvise says. “It goes into Sorrenti’s wine or his food. Timing and placement will be explained. The access route is already arranged.”
The room seems to shrink. I can feel the bookshelves pressing in, the oil portraits watching from the walls.
A vial. Poison.
Not a message to carry, or an envelope to deliver, or another dirty errand I can pretend is just obedience.
Poison.
“You’re sending me to kill him.” The words come out flat. They are not a protest. They are barely even a question. Just the fact of it, laid bare.
Alvise’s expression doesn’t shift. “I’m sending you to do what this family requires.”
What this family requires. That is all it has ever been. Not what I choose. Not what I want. What they need from someone they can spare.
Marcella steps closer. Her perfume is faint and expensive. Something with jasmine that I smell in my nightmares. “You’ll be invisible. No one watches the staff. No one remembers the girl who pours the wine. You go in, you do as instructed, and you leave.”
And if I get caught, I think. And if I fail.
“You’ll have the placement, the timing, and the method before you leave this house tomorrow,” Alvise says. “The man coordinating the service route will give you instructions.”
I don’t ask who the man is. It doesn’t matter. Another pair of hands moving me where I need to go. Another cog in my family’s machine.
I take too long to answer. Marcella’s mouth thins.
“Your mother also couldn’t do what was required of her.”
The words hit exactly where they’re aimed. She’s been aiming at that wound for years. She knows its shape better than anyone.
“Weak,” Marcella continues. “Soft. Foolish enough to believe she could buy herself something better. Foolish enough to trust the wrong people. I’d hoped you’d learned from her mistakes.”
I have. That’s the cruelest part. I’ve learned so well that running never crosses my mind. I’ve learned that refusal is weakness, weakness is betrayal, and betrayal is the thing that gets women like my mother killed.
“She made her choice,” Alvise says. His voice is calm. The voice of a man discussing history he’s already written. “And the family paid the price for her disloyalty. You won’t make the same error.”
It isn’t a question. It isn’t even a command. It’s the closing of a door I’ve never been allowed to open.
“Yes, sir,” I say.
Marcella studies my face, searching for the crack. The hesitation. The weakness they’ve always told me I inherited.
“This is your chance to prove you’re not what she was,” she says. “Usefulness, Antonella. That’s all anyone in this house has ever asked of you.”
Usefulness. The word I’ve been swallowing since I was five years old. Carry the tray. Clean the mess. Deliver the message. Apologize for the tension. Stand nearby until needed. Make yourself useful before anyone has to ask.
Now make yourself useful by killing a man.
“Your uniform will be given to you before you get there,” Alvise says. “The poison will be handed to you before you leave. You won’t speak of this to anyone.”
“Yes, sir.”
“You’ll succeed.” He picks up a pen from the desk, his attention already shifting to the papers before him. “This family doesn’t tolerate failure.”
Marcella turns back to the window. Dismissed.
I leave the study.
The hallway feels longer on the way out, the portraits watching as the floor creaks under my feet. I pass the formal dining room where I’ve carried trays for guests who look through me, the sitting room where Marcella corrects my posture and my tone and my very existence, the service corridor I know better than any room built for the family.
Back to my own room, with its narrow bed, bare walls, and the closet where my clothes hang in a single row.
I sit on the edge of the mattress and stare at my hands.
Tomorrow I’ll carry a vial of poison into Cristiano Sorrenti’s house and I’ll do it because the alternative is proving my mother’s weakness lives in me.
I’ll do it because obedience is the only language this family has ever taught me.
I’ll do it because they’ve made certain I forgot how to say no.
I lie back on the bed and stare at the ceiling. I don’t cry, because crying is weakness, and weakness is the thing that gets women killed in this family.
Tomorrow, I’ll become invisible: quiet face, lowered eyes, useful hands.
It’s what I’ve been trained for my entire life.
[divider]
The van leaves us at the service entrance. Three other temporary staff climb out ahead of me, and I follow because that’s what I’m supposed to do. Follow. Blend. Disappear into the line of black uniforms and pinned-up hair.
A man waits inside the door in dark slacks, a white shirt, and a black vest, with an earpiece curling toward his collar. He checks a tablet and waves us through without looking at our faces.
“Sandro Greco handles the routing,” one of the other girls murmurs. “He’ll tell us where to stand.”
I nod.
We move through a narrow corridor. Service access. The walls are clean but plain, stripped of whatever decoration lines the main halls, and our shoes echo on the tile. Every few feet, a camera watches from above. I count without meaning to. One. Two. Three. The lenses mark our progress like patient eyes.
The corridor opens into a staging area: stainless steel counters, warmers full of trays, a kitchen meant to feed the beautiful rooms without ever being seen. Staff move in practiced patterns, carrying plates and glasses and bottles. No one looks up.
Sandro Greco appears from a side door. He’s smaller than I expected, neat and forgettable in the way certain men cultivate. Thinning hair, close-trimmed beard, brown eyes already dismissing us as interchangeable. He carries a tablet and a walkie-talkie and the efficient impatience of a man who has too many bodies to place and not enough time to care about any of them.
“Four temps,” he says into the walkie-talkie. Then to us: “You. Wine service. You. Tray passing. You. Water station.” His finger lands on me. “Follow. Tray service near the main table.”
I fall in behind him.
He moves fast through another corridor, this one wider, and I keep pace. A glimpse of polished floor flashes through a half-open door. A guard stands at a threshold, watching until I pass. Another camera. The distant sound of voices, male and low.
“Main dining through there.” Sandro points without slowing. “You’ll enter when the signal comes. Carry trays in, set them on the side table, step back. Don’t speak. Don’t make eye contact. Don’t stand between any man and his glass. If someone addresses you, answer yes or no. Nothing more.”
“Yes, sir.”
He glances at me then. A brief flick of assessment. “The event runs two hours. You’ll cycle through three times. First round is appetizers. Second round is clearing. Third round is after-dinner service. Wine, water, whatever’s requested.”
Three cycles. Three chances to get close enough.
My hand finds the small shape in my apron pocket. The vial. Slender. Glass. The poison inside is nearly colorless. I’ve been told it’ll dissolve in wine without taste or film.
“Questions?” Sandro asks.
“No, sir.”
He leaves me at the service door. A narrow hallway stretches ahead, ending at a door that opens into the main room. The voices are clearer now. The low rumble of powerful men speaking to other powerful men. The clink of glasses. The particular tone that settles around someone important.
I press my back to the wall.
My hands are steady. I’ve trained them to be steady since I was a child. Don’t spill. Don’t shake. Don’t let them see you’re afraid.
The vial presses against my thigh in my apron pocket.
Through the gap in the door, the room comes into view.
Dark wood paneling. Heavy drapes pulled back from tall windows. A long table set for twelve, maybe fifteen. Candles. Crystal. The formal architecture of men who make decisions that change other people’s lives.
And at the head of the table, Cristiano Sorrenti.
He’s tall. I can tell even seated. Broad shoulders under a charcoal suit that fits like it was built for him. Dark hair, short on the sides, longer on top. A face that isn’t handsome in any soft way. Strong nose. Hard jaw. Deep-set eyes fixed on the man speaking. He barely moves, but the room keeps adjusting around him.
He doesn’t perform authority. He wears it, the way other men wear watches or rings. Something so constant it no longer requires thought.
My stomach clenches.
This is the man my family wants dead. This is the man they’ve sent me to kill with nothing but a vial of poison and a server’s uniform.
He says something to the man beside him. A few words. Low. The other man nods quickly, too quickly, and reaches for his wine.
Cristiano’s hands are still. Long fingers. No fidgeting. He turns his glass slowly, absently, while he listens to someone across the table. When he speaks, the others go quiet. The silence of men who understand that the person talking can end careers and lives with a single sentence.
The signal comes. A light tap on my shoulder from another server.
“Tray service. Go.”
I lift the tray, adjust my grip, and walk through the door.
The room takes me in.
No one looks up. No one stops talking. I’m a black uniform with a tray, and that means I’m furniture. Background. Part of the machinery that keeps their glasses full and their plates cleared.
Along the side table, I set down the appetizers and step back.
His hands.
They rest on the table, one curled loosely around the stem, the other flat against the wood. Still. Patient. The hands of a man who doesn’t need to reach for what he wants because it comes to him.
I look away before he can feel my stare.
First cycle complete. Back through the service door. Down the narrow hall. Into the staging area where the other servers collect the next round of trays.
The vial is still there, glass against my fingers. Small enough to disappear.
Two more cycles.
The second round is clearing. I move through the room again, collecting empty plates and glasses, closer to the head of the table this time. Close enough to see the fine grain of the wood, the slight sheen of sweat on one man’s temple, the way Cristiano’s wineglass is still half-full.
Not yet. Not this round.
I clear the plates and leave.
The third round comes too fast.
After-dinner service. Wine. Water. Whatever’s requested. The other servers spread through the room, filling glasses, topping off drinks. I take the wine bottle and move.
Closer. Closer.
Cristiano Sorrenti sits three feet away from me, and I’m supposed to pour poison into his glass and walk away like nothing’s happened.
His glass sits on the table. Red wine, dark as blood. If I time it right, if I palm the vial while I pour, if my hands don’t shake, if no one’s watching. If. If. If.
Each condition settles on top of the last.
His head turns.
Not quite toward me. He checks the room once. Automatic. Instinctive. A habit that has kept him alive this long.
His eyes pass over me. A woman in black. A server. No one.
But for half a second, his attention catches. It isn’t suspicion. Only notice. The notice a man like him pays to anything that moves within arm’s reach.
My fingers tighten on the wine bottle.
Don’t react. Don’t freeze. Don’t let him see.
I pour for the man to Cristiano’s left. Steady hand. Perfect pour. Black uniform. Invisible girl.
By the time I finish, he’s listening to the man across the table again.
But my skin still prickles, and I know with a sudden, sick certainty that getting close enough to poison this man will be nothing like my family promised.
[divider]Chapter Two
Ella
The last cycle.
The wine bottle sits heavy in my grip, and the vial presses against my thigh through the apron pocket, small and warm from my body heat.
I move back through the service door.
The room has thinned since I left. Three men are gone, and the remaining guests nurse their drinks while speaking in low tones that don’t carry. Cristiano’s glass sits nearly empty now, a few mouthfuls of red at the bottom.
My chance.
At the side table, I set down the wine bottle and slip my fingers into my apron pocket. The vial is smooth, smaller than my little finger. I palm it carefully, letting it rest against the heel of my hand.
Breathe. Blank face. Steady hands.
With the wine bottle in my other hand, I approach the head of the table.
The guest to Cristiano’s right lifts his glass, so I pour for him first. Red wine, dark and smooth.
He nods, already turning back to the conversation, and I step around his chair.
Cristiano’s glass waits.
He isn’t looking at me. He watches the man across the table, the one talking about shipping routes. His hand sits loose near the base of the glass. Not holding it. Just resting there.
I reach for the rim.
My thumb finds the vial’s lid.
One motion. That’s all it would take. Tip the vial, pour the wine, and the poison would dissolve without taste or film. He would drink. He would die. And I would walk out of this room in a black uniform with nothing on my hands but a server’s ordinary work.
I tilt the vial.
Cristiano’s head turns without warning. One second he’s listening to the man across the table, and the next his eyes are on my hand.
The vial catches the light, a tiny flash of glass against my palm.
His hand moves fast. His fingers close around my wrist before I can pull back.
The men don’t notice. The one across the table keeps talking about shipping routes, and the others drink as Cristiano’s grip tightens just enough to lock my hand in place.
My stomach drops so hard I almost sway.
His stare is flat. Still. He looks once at the vial caught against my palm, then back at my face. He doesn’t blink.
There is nowhere to pull away.
No explanation that would save me.
My breath catches wrong, too high in my chest, because there is no version of this moment where I survive cleanly. I’m going to die here.
“Everyone out.”
His voice doesn’t rise. The men at the table go quiet. The speaker stops mid-sentence. One by one, they stand, gather their drinks, and move toward the far end of the room. A door opens, then closes.
The serving staff near the walls glance at each other. One of them, an older woman, catches my eye and looks away fast before they file out through the service door.
I stay where I am. His hand is still on my wrist, and my legs stopped working the moment he looked at me. Every step leaving the room sounds too loud. Every closing door feels like another lock sliding into place.
The room empties. The door clicks shut behind the last server.
Silence.
He takes the vial from my hand. His fingers pry it away without effort. He holds it up to the light, swirls it once, then brings it near his nose and pulls back before inhaling.
“Poison.”
Not a question.
A thin ringing rises in my ears. My chest locks around quick, shallow breaths. The same instinct that’s kept me alive in my father’s house: go still, say nothing, wait.
His hand releases my wrist.
For one second, I think I might run.
Then his palm comes down flat between my shoulder blades.
It isn’t a touch or a warning.
It’s a shove.
The force of it knocks the breath out of me before I understand I’m moving. His chair crashes back somewhere behind him, loud enough to split the room open, and the table rushes up hard against my hips.
I hit the edge with a dull, sickening pain.
My hands fly out.
Glass skids. Silverware clatters. Someone’s untouched wine topples and rolls, spilling red across the white cloth in a fast, spreading stain.
The table doesn’t move.
I do.
He drives me down over it like my weight is nothing. My palms slide with the cloth, and then my cheek hits it, rough starch scraping my skin. The smell of wine and polish and expensive food fills my nose all at once, too sharp, too close.
For one horrible second, all I can think is that I dropped the vial.
That I failed.
That my father will know I failed.
Then Cristiano’s hand presses harder between my shoulders, pinning me there, and the thought breaks apart.
His body comes in behind mine.
Not fully against me. Just close enough that I feel the heat of him through my server’s uniform. Close enough that I understand before my mind does: there is no space left. No step backward. No clean breath. No angle that puts me beyond his reach.
The edge of the table cuts into my hip. My ribs press against the hard wood beneath the cloth. Wine seeps toward my wrist, warm at first, then cooling against my skin.
My face is turned sideways.
I stay still.
His hand remains heavy and certain between my shoulders, as if the whole room has narrowed to that single point on my back.
“Look at me.”
His voice is low. Not loud. Worse than loud.
I turn my head just enough. My cheek presses harder into the cloth.
His face is inches from mine, his expression as calm and unreadable as the surface of water that hasn’t moved in a long time.
“Who sent you?”
The words come out soft. Almost gentle. His breath touches my cheek.
I say nothing.
His hand gathers my hair at the back of my skull. Twists. My head jerks back, spine arching off the table as my hips press harder into the wood. The pain is bright and sudden. My eyes water, but I don’t make a sound.
“Speak.”
My lips stay closed. The trembling starts anyway, first in my arms, then down through my legs, and I hate it. I can’t stop it. My fingers curl against the tablecloth, nails scraping the fabric. Every muscle pulls toward escape, but the table gives me nowhere to go.
He yanks my head to the side. My neck screams. His mouth comes close to my ear.
“You walk into my house. You carry poison to my table. You try to put it in my glass right in front of me.” His voice drops. “And you think keeping your mouth shut will save you.”
His hips shift against me. The press of him isn’t accidental. He’s letting me feel the weight of him, the solid bulk of a man who can break me without trying. The table edge bites into my hip. My legs are pinned between his and the furniture.
My breath turns thin. It’s not only my neck, though he’s hurting that too. It’s the same locked-up terror that comes when my father calls me to the study. When Marcella stands too close. When I know punishment is coming and I can’t run and I can’t fight and the only thing left is to endure it without giving them more ammunition.
“I asked you a question.”
My jaw aches from clenching. My eyes stay fixed on a wine stain near the table’s edge. Looking at him would mean seeing what comes next, and seeing it before it arrives might break me faster than the thing itself.
He releases my hair.
My face hits the tablecloth. I taste wine where it’s soaked through.
His hand comes down flat on my lower back. A slap. The sound cracks through the empty room, and my body jerks before the sting blooms hot across my ass. I bite the inside of my cheek until I taste blood.
“Answer me.”
I stay silent.
His fingers dig into my hip through the apron. He pulls me backward off the table edge just enough that my feet scramble for the floor. My shoes slip, but he holds me up by the waist, one arm locked around my middle, my back pressed against his chest.
His mouth hovers near my ear.
“You’re not a professional.”
The words land strange. My brain stutters over them.
“Someone who does this for a living wouldn’t be so scared. Would have a better plan.” His arm tightens. “Your breathing is giving you away. I can feel every breath through your back.”
His palm presses flat against my stomach. Beneath it, every part of me goes rigid.
“So who are you? Really?”
I close my eyes. The room tilts behind the dark. I can’t answer. Because if I tell him my father’s name, I’ll be the daughter who confessed. If I tell him nothing, I’ll be the assassin who stayed silent. Either way, I’m dead. Either way, someone will punish me.
My silence is the only thing that belongs to me.
“Fine.”
He lets go.
I stagger, knees buckling before I catch myself on the table’s edge. My hands are shaking. I press them flat against the wood to stop it.
He steps back, then moves across the room. A door opens. Low voices follow. I don’t turn around. I can’t make myself look.
Footsteps return. Two sets.
Someone grabs my arm.
Not him.
A man in a dark shirt, built like a wall, pulls my hands behind my back. Zip ties close around my wrists, the plastic biting into my skin.
I don’t fight. Fighting will make it worse. Fighting will give them a reason to hit me.
The man hauls me upright. My legs barely hold. Cristiano stands near the far door, watching.
He nods once at the other man.
“Take her downstairs to the interrogation room.”
The man shoves me forward.
Behind me, Cristiano speaks one more time.
“Search her. Find out who she is. And keep her breathing.”
[divider]
Cristiano
The dining room empties while wine soaks into the tablecloth where her face hit it, and the vial sits in my pocket, small and light.
Dante appears at the service entrance. My jacket comes off and lands over the back of a chair.
“Hold the staff. Check every ID. Run every name.” I unbutton my cuffs. “No one leaves until I clear them.”
He nods and vanishes.
The remaining guests cluster in the corridor, men who came for dinner and watched me clear a room in thirty seconds. Ricci adjusts his tie while Ferraro checks his phone, and Lombardi keeps staring at the door where they took her.
I walk toward them. “My apologies. A security matter. Nothing that concerns you.”
Ferraro’s eyes slide to the dining room. “Trouble?”
“Handled.”
I shake hands, accept brief goodnights, and let Lombardi linger just long enough to regret it. When I hold his gaze, he remembers somewhere else to be.
They leave. The house goes quiet around me.
Marco is waiting in the corridor outside the security room.
“The girl?”
“Lower level. Searched. No ID, no phone, no weapon.”
“No communication device?”
“Nothing.”
I lean against the wall. My pulse has settled, but something still hums under my skin.
“Her uniform is real,” Marco says. “Standard service black. But it doesn’t fit right. Someone grabbed it in a hurry or borrowed it from a thicker girl.”
She was thin, with wrists I could have snapped in one hand.
“The other staff doesn’t know her,” Marco continues. “Temporary placement. I’m tracking how she got in.”
“Do that.” I push off the wall. “I want to know who added her to the rotation.”
The stairs take me down to the lower corridor, where the climate units hum behind the walls. Two guards stand outside the interrogation room, and they straighten when I approach.
“She inside?”
Marco nods. “Searched. Zip ties still on.”
I open the door.
She sits on a metal chair bolted to the floor, hands behind her back, head down. Dark hair spills over her shoulder, half-pulled from its band. The server’s uniform hangs wrong on her frame, loose at the waist, tight across the shoulders, no longer tucked in.
Her face shows nothing, but it is the kind of nothing a person has to hold in place.
As I circle her, she doesn’t track me. Her upper arms press against her ribs when I pass behind her, a contraction quick enough that she probably doesn’t notice it herself. Her wrists twist inside the zip ties, but she doesn’t struggle.
She waits.
I stop in front of her and crouch down to her level.
Her eyes stay on the floor.
“Lift your head.”
She lifts her gaze. Hazel-brown and watchful, with too much white showing. Her knees lock together, but her expression stays carefully empty.
Stillness like that isn’t courage or stupidity. It has been taught.
“Someone sent you. Someone who didn’t care if you died.”
She doesn’t flinch at the words. Her eyes stay on mine, but her throat moves around a swallow she can’t quite suppress.
This close, I can see the fine tremor in her shoulders and the sharp line of her collarbone above the uniform’s neckline. The clothes were chosen fast, by hands that cared more about access than fit.
“Who sent you?”
Her mouth closes around whatever answer she almost gave.
The silence stretches. In my experience, it breaks people faster than pressure. Most suspects fill it with excuses, bargains, confessions. They talk because they can’t stand the weight of a man like me waiting.
She doesn’t.
Her breathing goes shallow. Her arms shift behind her back. But her face gives me no calculation, no bravado, no visible crack.
Nobody this young holds quiet this well by accident.
I stand and walk behind her.
Her shoulders draw up half an inch when I move out of her line of sight. A quick, involuntary thing she can’t stop.
“The way I see it, you have two options.” I move to her left side. Her head turns the smallest fraction, tracking sound. “You talk, and I decide what happens next. Or you stay quiet, and what I choose will be less forgiving.”
When I come around to face her again, her chest is rising too fast. Too shallow.
She is scared enough to shake apart, and still she keeps her mouth shut.
That tells me something. It doesn’t give me her name or the hand behind her, but it gives me the shape of the place she came from. I’ve seen women go still like this before, when the person behind them frightens them more than the man in front of them.
“You’re protecting someone.” I tilt my head.
Her mouth tightens.
“Which is it?” I lean down, close enough that she has to look up or look away. She looks up. Those hazel-brown eyes are wide, wet at the corners, but they don’t drop. “Are you loyal, or are you afraid?”
I pull back and check my watch.
The night is still young.
I have time.
“You’re going to stay until you’re ready to talk.” I turn toward the door. “When you are, tell the guard.”
With my hand on the knob, I pause.
“What I don’t have patience for is stupidity. Whoever you’re protecting, they aren’t here to save you.”
Her breath catches, a strangled sound swallowed before it can become a word.
I glance back. Her face is still blank, but her eyes have gone glassy, full to the edge. No tears fall.
She blinks hard, too late to hide it.
I step into the corridor. The door clicks shut behind me.
Marco pushes off the wall. “She talk?”
“No.”
He looks toward the door.
“Want me to push harder?”
“Not yet.” I roll my shoulders, but the tension from pinning her to the table hasn’t faded. “She’s not a professional.”
Marco studies me more closely. “How do you figure?”
“A professional would have had a better plan.” Behind the door, she makes no sound at all. “She was sent in unprepared.”
“Maybe whoever sent her expected her to get lucky.”
“Maybe.” I look toward the door. “Move her to the holding room at the end of the lower corridor.”
Marco’s face changes. The holding room is for people we don’t release. People we question over days.
“Secured?”
“Yes.” I check my watch. “And this stays private. No staff reports. No security chatter outside this house. If anyone asks, tonight’s dinner went smooth and the guests left on time.”
“And the girl?”
“What girl?”
Marco’s mouth thins, but he doesn’t ask me to explain.
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