Page 19 of Ruthless Sin
“He told me.”
“Good,” she says. “Then you know the protocol. You do not step foot inside the clinic building.”
“Understood, Gia.”
“Sofia’s in the same group. Same SUV.”
I look down at her face. My twin. The one who knows me better than I know myself. “You’re putting Sofia in the vehicle as insurance.”
“I’m putting Sofia in the car because she needs the therapy session, Nico, and Mila needs to see another survivor who’s further along the timeline. If it also means Mila won’t bolt the second you turn the ignition, that’s a bonus.”
“Gia—”
“Don’t Gia me. You look like total shit, by the way.”
“Thanks.”
She shifts her coffee cup to her other hand. “When’s the last time you actually slept.”
“I’m fine.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
I don’t answer her.
She steps closer, her voice dropping. “I don’t know what’s been wrong with your head since you came back from Moscow. But whatever it is, Nico, if any part of that trauma walks into that SUV with her on Tuesday morning, I will know. So will she. And I will pull this assignment before you can turn the key.”
I hold her eyes. “It won’t.”
“You don’t know that.”
“It won’t, Gia.”
She watches my face for a long beat. The twin thing. Her eyes track from my mouth to the hollow under my eye and back again without blinking, the same look she’s been giving me since we were kids in the Garden District, the look that knew I had a concussion before my knees gave that day Marco shoved me off the dock and I told her I was fine.
“Okay,” she says, her voice softening just a fraction. “Okay.”
She reaches up, her fingers touching my cheek. Quick. A ghost of a gesture. Then she drops her hand back to her side.
“Tuesday,” she says. Then she turns and walks away down the long hall.
I stand alone in the corridor. The study door is still wide open behind my back, and I can hear Dante already on the line, handling the next crisis.
The back room is two doors down. Marco is sitting at the comms station with three high-resolution monitors up, his shirt sleeves pushed all the way to his elbows. The black ink on his knuckles moves as his fingers hit the keys.
He does not stand when I walk in. He hasn’t done that since the promotion. I am glad of it.
Izzy is sitting at her laptop in the dark corner of the room, her shoulders hunched. Her sleeves are pushed up, and the geometric tattoo on her left wrist flashes every time she types.
“Two tail cars on the run,” Marco says without looking back, updating the tracking grids on the central monitor. “The surveillance van rotates with a civilian sedan to keep the lines dirty. Tuesday’s route goes through the Garden District and the Magazine corridor. Casa Lucia security has been brought up to war baseline. We’re running automated counters on the perimeter doors.”
“You’ll want to see this,” Izzy says, her eyes glued to her own screen. “Nico. Come here.”
I cross the room, my boots loud against the tile.
Her display is split down the center. Port surveillance video logs on the left. Communications metadata waveforms on theright. The same Russian voice cuts through three different intercepts. He is moving across our city.
Izzy taps the trackpad with her thumb. The voice comes through her speaker, rough and low. The questions are too clean, too rehearsed. The bastard didn’t come up with them. He’s running someone else’s script.
