Page 41 of South of Justice
He tapped a file on his screen and rotated the monitor slightly so she could see it. “There’s an account here. Layered beneath a defunct logistics firm. It was recently flagged for inconsistencies.”
Lucía stared blankly at him for a long moment. This wasn’t about the other night. This was about work. Actual work.
He shook his head irritably, as if she were being deliberately stupid and he had no time for it. So she leaned forward, scanning the spreadsheet.
“In this firm, there are three sets of books,” Javier said. “Two of them are lies.”
She frowned. “And the third?”
He smiled. “The one we don’t show the authorities.”
Her eyes darted up to meet his. His tone was level. Neutral. But she felt the warning behind the words.
He continued, “This is off-roster work. Not billable. No paper trail. I need you to reconcile these files. You’ll report only to me.”
Lucía’s mouth went dry. “Is this…internal?”
“Let’s call it sensitive.”
He tapped a key. A secondary folder opened. It was encrypted. But she saw the name in the metadata:SinalData Holdings.
The name struck a bell she didn’t like. She forced her expression flat. “I thought you trusted only senior staff with discretionary accounts,” she said.
“I do.”
Silence. Lucía sat back slowly, spine straight. Again, all she could do was stare at him. This meeting had gone nothing like she’d imagined. She wasn’t being fired, she was being promoted. She was being invited into a secret upper echelon within the firm, where the real clients lived. The real money, too. And the real power.
SinalData. Sinaloa.
Cartel.
Javier’s smile never shifted. “You’ll work from home. Air-gapped. No backups. No questions.”
She said nothing, just looked at the screen. The folder blinked, waiting.
He slid a USB drive across the desk toward her. “Still want the job?”
Lucía took the drive. The plastic felt heavier than it should have. Then she heard herself say, “Yes.”
Downstairs, the elevator doors slid open. Lucía stepped into the lobby, pulse still drumming from the conversation upstairs. She adjusted her grip on the USB drive in her palm, fingers clenched so tightly the edges were biting into her skin.
Ahead, Mateo stood by the front desk, flipping through a file. He glanced up as she approached.
Their eyes met. She couldn’t read his expression. Couldn’t afford to try.
She kept walking.
If he spoke, she didn’t hear it. If he moved, she didn’t see it. She passed him like smoke sliding past a closed window.
If she turned around now—if she met his eyes, if she let him see what she was holding—he’d know what she’d agreed to.
And she wasn’t sure she’d survive the look on his face when he realized how far she’d gone.
TWENTY-EIGHT
NINE YEARS AGO
The elevator lightsabove Lucía hummed softly. Somewhere below, the firm was settling into its nightly silence, screensavers blooming across empty monitors, the hum of expensive machinery whispering through the bones of the building.
