Page 93 of Captive Promise

It never is, not this early, not with that particular ringtone. The name on the display kicks the smile right off my face.

Luca.

I let it ring once, twice, a third time. Childish, maybe, this fleeting urge to ignore it. To cling to the last fractured edges of that fragile peace.

But I know better.

Whatever waits on the other end of that call, it won’t disappear just because I don’t answer.

“Yeah?” The word feels heavy on my tongue as I finally pick up, my eyes never leaving the security feed as I watch Katerina scoop Seraphina up and settle her on her hip.

“You need to see something.” Luca’s voice is tight, strangled almost with an unfamiliar cadence. Dread curls, cold and slick, in my gut. “I’m sending it now. Read it before you say anything.”

I want to argue and demand he spit it out, to stop drawing this out, but there’s something in his voice that stills my tongue. “Luca, what⁠—”

“Just read it, Nico.” He hangs up before I can respond, the click of the disconnecting call unnaturally loud in my ear.

The message comes through a beat later. I open it warily, my heartbeat a drumbeat of trepidation against my ribs. Then I read it once, twice, three times, the words searing themselves into my brain.

Russo has identified you. He knows Seraphina Santoro is with you. He knows you’re not loyal to the cause.

The breath leaves me in a rush, the room spinning dizzyingly around me.

I grip the edge of my desk, white-knuckled, fighting the surge of nausea.

Fuck.

This should be good news.

Russo knows too much, but he doesn’t know where I am, doesn’t know about Katerina.

But I know him. I know how he operates. This isn’t a message meant to frighten.

It’s a promise of what’s to come.

I’m still reeling from the message when the door flies open without warning. Luca strides in, his usually impassive face etched with lines of stress and exhaustion.

He must have come straight from wherever he was when he called, because his phone is still clenched in his hand, his knuckles white with the force of his grip.

He kicks the door shut behind him but makes no move to sit, his body thrumming with barely leashed agitation.

“You’ve read it?” He jerks his chin toward my phone, the words clipped and harsh.

I nod, a single sharp dip of my head. “I read it.”

“There’s more.” Luca drags a hand over his face, and the gesture is so weary, so uncharacteristically vulnerable, that it sends a new spike of dread through me. “We found him. The leak.”

Every muscle in my body goes taut, a livewire of sudden, vicious tension. “Who?”

“William Caruso.”

The name hangs in the air between us. I turn it over in my mind, searching for a face to match the syllables, but there’s nothing. The name is as strange to me as his face.

“Caruso,” I repeat, my brow furrowing. “I don’t know him.”

“You wouldn’t,” Luca says, a grim twist to his mouth. “He’s in logistics and been with us eleven years, but nothing high profile. Schedules shipments, plans routes, that sort of shit.”

Eleven years. Over a decade of service, of supposed loyalty. And now this. Betrayal. The thought settles like lead in my stomach.