Page 13 of Beautiful Ruins
“Your answers.”
Something in the room changed.The air felt heavier, closer.I held his gaze anyway, even as fear finally settled—tight and real—in my chest.This wasn’t banter anymore.It wasn’t testing the edges.This was a line being drawn, deliberate and unmistakable.
“Well,” I forced a smile that felt thin at the seams, “good luck with that.”
His grin widened, all patience and promise.
“Do I at least get a name?”I pressed.I didn’t drop my arms.Didn’t soften my tone.“What do I call you?My captor?My warden?My Master?”
He snickered, low and brief, like I’d amused him more than I should have.
“You can call me Raze.”
The name settled between us, a truth I had asked for.And in that moment, I knew—with a sudden, terrible clarity—that I hadn’t failed to convince him at all.
I’d done something worse.
I’d made this interesting.
5
Raze
Isat alone in my office with a glass of untouched whiskey, the glow from my screens washing the room in cold light.My people were spread throughout the property—monitoring cameras, checking perimeters, locking the house down tight.No one came close to the property without me knowing.
On the tablet in front of me was the file my tech had sent over.
Her file.
I started with her name.
Isotta Ferraro.
What an unusual name, I thought.For a very strange girl.
Aside from that, there was nothing.He found no aliases and no false identities buried under layers of paperwork.I scrolled slowly, reading every line, every note.There was not much on her, either good or bad.
I ran her face through everything I had—official databases, gray-market systems, and a few places that didn’t exist on paper at all.Places that only stayed open because the right people had access to them.
Still nothing.
No criminal record or strange money trails.She didn’t have any unexplained travel patterns.There was no handler hovering just out of sight, waiting for her to surface or fail.
She didn’t exist the way assets usually did.Which narrowed it down to two possibilities.
She was either a genius plant—so clean it made my jaw tighten.Or she was a civilian idiot with spectacularly bad timing.
Both options were lethal.And both kept my attention longer than they should have.
I leaned back in my chair and let out a slow breath, the kind that burned on the way out.Someone had been sniffing around my operations lately.Not enough to be alarming, but enough to warrant caution.
It was amateur work, but I didn’t believe in coincidences.Not in my world.Which meant I had to keep a close eye on things.
If she was connected, then she was bait—pretty, expendable, meant to draw my eye while something sharper moved in the dark.
And if she wasn’t?
Then she was an unfortunate accident waiting to happen.
