Page 42 of Ruthless Scar
The picture starts to build slowly. Three warehouses connected through the network. Weekly shipments logged as commercial freight. The manifests look clean but the routing patterns don’t hold. Too many transfers for legitimate cargo.
“These shipping routes don’t add up.” I lean toward his side of the desk, pointing at the monitor. “Moving commercial goods from Houston to New Orleans, you don’t route through three transfer facilities. Unless you’re not moving goods.”
He leans in. The sandalwood hits me. His arm an inch from mine.
“Or you’re moving goods that need documentation at every stop,” he says.
I swallow. “Documentation. Or inspection points paid to look the other way.”
“Which brings us to the real question.” I pull back. His tone has shifted. Not investigation-mode anymore. Colder. The voice he uses when someone is about to become a problem. “The raidfailed. The Benedettis cleared out before we got within a mile. Someone knew we were coming.”
“You think there’s a leak.”
“I know there’s a leak. The question is who.” He counts them off. Dante. Himself. Marco on comms. Carlo and Tomás on teams. Enzo on procurement, Vic on routes. “Seven people had access.”
I cross-reference each against the organizational structure I memorized during my first week here. “Who’s the eighth?”
“Rosa. She knew the timing. Not the details.”
“Rosa is not your mole.”
“Everyone stays on the list. That’s how it works.”
Granite. I search his expression for subtext, for some indication that he is hinting at more than just operational protocol.
Except he wasn’t locked in last night. I was there. I saw what he looked like with his forehead pressed to mine and his fingers tracing my body.
I grab my laptop. “I’ll dig into Carlo and Tomás. Money, phones, anything off pattern in the last six months.” My voice is too fast. “If someone leaked the location, there’s a trail. There’s always a trail.”
“Isabella.”
My name in his mouth. Three syllables. Not the clipped command voice he uses with everyone else. A different register, rougher at the edges, and my argument dies somewhere between my brain and my tongue.
“What?”
He’s looking at me. Not at the file. Not at the wall. At me.
“You were in the shower for forty-five minutes last night and then you didn’t leave your room.”
I stare at him. “How do you know that?”
His attention drops to the page. “I know where everyone is in this house. Always.”
“That’s surveillance.”
“That’s my job.”
“Your job is monitoring my shower schedule?”
“My job is making sure you’re alive.”
I pull my laptop up higher and pretend my cheeks aren’t burning.
The door opens. Nico doesn’t knock. He leans in the frame holding a tray like he’s been sent on a mission he didn’t volunteer for. Garlic. Butter. Fresh bread. My stomach, that shameless traitor, growls loud enough to echo off the bookshelves.
“Rosa says eat.” He sets the tray between our files. “Her words were longer than that but I’m not repeating them.”
“We’re in the middle of?—”
