Page 48 of Fastest Kill

Fred: Keep talking about his dick, and I'll tell Kon.

Athena sent a row of laughing emojis with eggplants and water sprays. Frederica giggled, despite the red that was blooming over her neck and face.

Athena: Easy, tiger. I'm not prying, but I just need to know the answer to one iddy biddy question, and then I'll drop it.

Fred: What?

Athena: Are the Colleoni balls as magical as you hoped?

More laughing and upside-down heart emojis from Giana. Assholes.

Fred: Fuck you.

Fred: And yes.

Athena: Love to hear it. Dante will be thrilled to be right.

Giana: It's one of their best inherited qualities.

Fred: I hate you all. It was a one-time thing, and just easier than going out to pick up a stranger.

Athena: If you say so.

Frederica stared at the screen for a full minute before pulling up the message feed again.

Fred: What color concealer am I supposed to use?

20

The cover story Dario built for the auction took four hours, a pile of sandwiches, and two pots of coffee. He needed fuel when he worked, and had loaded up on groceries before they arrived.

They had flown into Vienna earlier that day, and he had ensured their safe house had two bedrooms and two bathrooms.

Frederica was still being weirdly polite, which was so unlike her that Dario was staying out of her way. He was glad to have the job to focus on and keep his mind off the filthy replays. Not that it worked much because the filthy replays were next level.

Dario worked the way he always worked: backward from the room. Who would be in it, what they would want to see, and what they needed to believe.

The auction Altun had described was the kind of private event that didn't appear in any calendar and was attended exclusively by people with enough money to be eccentric and enough connections to be dangerous.

The seller was moving the mirror through a specialist. The buyers would be collectors of the genuinely rare, the possibly illegal, and the aggressively unprovenanced.

They would be suspicious of obvious new money and indifferent to charm for its own sake. They wanted to deal with people who understood the value of what was on offer, not people who were impressed by it.

That was the angle.

Dario had his laptop open with four different research tabs, a notepad with handwritten notes because some things he didn't trust to any server, and a plate of food at his elbow.

He had pulled the chair to face the window so he could see the Viennese skyline going gray-gold in the evening light while he worked, and had been aware for the last forty minutes that Frederica was watching him from the other side of the room.

Not overtly. She had her own work spread across the second desk, that focused on the logistics of getting them out of the city with the mirror if they ran into trouble. She checked her laptop. She made calls. Every so often, her attention crossed the room toward him.

Dario had spent a significant portion of his adult life making sure people looked at him and knew exactly what it felt like to be watched.

"Signor and Signora Ferraro," he said, without turning around.

A pause. "Explain."

"Our cover." He pulled the notepad toward him. "Gabriele Ferraro. Art consultant, private. Family money from Brescia, old textile manufacturing, sold the business in 2018 and reinvested in what his wife diplomatically calls 'alternative assets.' He is serious, not flashy. He knows what things are worth and doesn't need to be told."