Page 59 of Claimed By the Boss
I feel like I’m getting close to something. I don’t yet know what. But close enough that whoever built this structure made sure, very deliberately, that I would need help to go any further.
That tells me something too.
Zane finds me still at the counter when his call ends, the notebooks still open, the diagram still spread across three pages I haven’t bothered to hide. I used to put all of this away before he could see it.
I don’t anymore. Somewhere in the last few weeks, I stopped needing to keep this part of myself separate from the part of myself he already knows.
He looks at the pages for a moment. Doesn’t ask.
“Productive morning?” he says instead, and there’s something in his voice that isn’t quite teasing and isn’t quite serious either.
“I found a name,” I say, before I can decide whether I’m ready to.
He looks at me.
I don’t tell him which name. Not yet. I’m not ready to hand him something I haven’t fully understood myself, not when handing him things has historically meant losing whatever leverage I had left.
But I watch his face for a reaction anyway, some flicker that might tell me whether the structure underneath this contract is something he built alone or something built with people I’ve started to trust.
His face gives me nothing.
I close the notebook. “Just a corner I’m still working through,” I say.
He nods slowly, like he knows there’s more to it and has decided, for now, to let me keep it.
I pour the coffee I won’t drink, and I think about Dominic’s name circled twice on a page he’s never going to see, and I think about how much closer I might be to something than I’ve ever let myself believe.
24
ZANE
Roman doesn’t knock.
That’s the first thing I register, before I’ve even looked up from the document in front of me. Roman knocks on every door in this building, has done for eight years, a habit so consistent that its absence functions as its own alarm. He comes in fast, closes the door behind him, and sets a single page on my desk without sitting down.
“Intercept came through twenty minutes ago,” he says. “Communication between a Marchetti contact and someone in Zurich.”
I read it once. Then again, slower.
The message is brief. It references a woman by description rather than name. American, mid-twenties, staying at a private medical facility outside the city. Asks about her schedule. Asks about the security around the building.
It’s Lena. There’s no other woman it could be.
“Source,” I say.
“Low-level contact, someone who does occasional surveillance work for hire. Not faction-affiliated directly, which means they’re using cutouts now instead of operating in the open.” Roman’s voice doesn’t change, but I know him well enough to hear what’s underneath it. “They’re building a picture. Her routine, her exposure, who’s around her.”
I’m already standing. Already reaching for my phone before I’ve fully decided what I’m about to do, the way I move when a threat crosses from theoretical into active, and the only acceptable response is speed.
“Move her,” I say. “Today. A different facility, full security detail, no public registration under her real name.”
“Understood.”
Roman is at the door when I stop. I stand there for a second, phone still in my hand, and something surfaces that I don’t have time for and address anyway, because some part of me has learned, slowly and at considerable cost, that not addressing things is exactly how I ended up here in the first place.
I think about the kitchen three weeks ago.Stop deciding for me what I can carry.Her voice, steady despite what it cost her to keep it steady, telling me precisely what she needed from me and precisely what she would not accept again.
I am about to do exactly what she told me not to do.
