Chapter 6 - The Poisoner's Trail
My blood turned to liquid ice.
"Julian!" I screamed, tearing myself out of Dominic’s grip and scrambling to my feet. "My mother!"
"They're alive, Miss Bennett! They're alive!" Gabe roared, holding up his hands to stem the panic. "The Westchester house was a decoy! I didn't send them to the main estate—I had the transport divert to a private safehouse in North Salem the second we saw the tracking beacons light up!"
I sank back against the edge of the sofa, my knees shaking so violently I had to grab the upholstery to keep from falling. My breath came in ragged, burning gasps.
"Who hit the house, Gabe?" Dominic demanded. He had risen to his feet with the fluid speed of a striking panther, all trace of intimacy wiped away, replaced by pure, lethal command.
"Cleaners," Gabe said, tossing the shattered transponder onto the coffee table. It skittered across the documents, leaving a smear of dark blood on the glass. "Four-man tactical team. Ex-Serbian paramilitaries operating out of a salvage yard in Newark. They had satellite coordinates and the encrypted transponder frequency of our primary transport. The only way they could have that data is if someone inside our communications hub sold the channel."
"Celeste doesn't have the codes to the security channels," Dominic said, his eyes narrowing into cold slits. "Only three people have administrative access to the primary transport frequencies. You, me..."
He stopped.
Dominic’s head turned slowly toward the floor-to-ceiling windows.
"...and Vance."
The older lawyer. The senior partner from Vance, Sterling & Croft who had laughed when I corrected the Italian translation in the Obsidian Room.
"Vance left the restaurant with Celeste," I said, the pieces assembling in my head with terrifying speed. "He was sweating. He was looking at his watch every two minutes during the service. I thought he was just nervous about the deal."
"Vance was my father's personal attorney for twenty years," Dominic said, his voice dropping into a register of terrifying calm. "He drafted the Maltese charters. He handled the family trust."
"Where is he now?" Dominic asked Gabe.
"Our watchers tracked him to an underground club in the Meatpacking District," Gabe replied. "The Vault. It's a high-stakes private gaming room run by the Lucchese family. Vance has a private room booked in the back. He’s meeting with someone."
Dominic reached for his jacket, pulling it on with swift, brutal efficiency.
"Call the strike team."
"Wait," I said, stepping between Dominic and the door.
Dominic paused, looking down at me with hard eyes. "Mara, this isn't a classroom. Vance is a traitor who just tried to slaughter your family. I am going to tear his throat out."
"And if you kick the door down with a tactical squad, what do you get?" I countered, my voice steady despite the adrenaline roaring in my veins. "A dead lawyer and a room full of shredded hard drives! Vance is an attorney. He doesn't carry the syndicate’s master keys in his head; he carries them in an encrypted cloud vault or a physical ledger. If he sees your men coming, he triggers the kill-switch on his servers, and you will never prove the Falco connection to the federal grand jury!"
Dominic stared at me. "The Vault doesn't let strangers in, Mara. It's an invitation-only members' club. You don't just walk in and ask to see his briefcase."
"You don't walk in as Dominic Rinaldi," I said, a reckless, desperate plan forming in my mind. "The news of the Obsidian Room hasn't broken yet, but Celeste thinks you're either dead or in an intensive care unit. If Dominic Rinaldi walks into a mob club, every alarm in Manhattan goes off."
"Then who walks in?" Dominic challenged.
I looked down at my stained waitress uniform.
"A high-roller from Milan," I said, my heart pounding. "A representative of the Falco syndicate sent to collect the final verification codes before the market opens at eight. Someone who speaks the regional dialect. Someone who can verify the maritime documents on the spot."
Dominic’s eyes widened slightly.
"No," he said immediately. "Absolutely not. It's too dangerous."
"I am the only person in this room who can speak northern Italian legal dialect without an American accent!" I argued, taking a step toward him, closing the space between us. "You said it yourself, Dominic—I see the threads they try to hide. Vance is terrified right now. He thinks he just participated in a double assassination. A terrified man wants to believe the handover is over. He wants to give the files to someone with authority and run."
Dominic looked at me for three long, agonizing seconds.
He looked at the fierce determination in my face, the fire that had replaced the broken terror of the waitress who had walked into this penthouse four hours ago.
"You don't go in alone," he said, his voice thick with a strange, possessive intensity. "You go in as the principal. I go in behind you as your security detail."
"Boss," Gabe warned from the doorway. "If someone recognizes your face—"
"They won't," Dominic cut in. "I’ll wear an earpiece, a service cap, and keep my head down. If anyone touches her, Gabe... you breach the building and burn it to the waterline."
Dominic turned back to me, his hands reaching out to grip my shoulders. His fingers dug into the fabric of my shirt, pulling me close.
"If this goes wrong, Mara... you drop to the floor. Don't look back. Don't try to be brave. You hit the deck, and I will handle the rest."
"It won't go wrong," I whispered, holding his gaze.
Thirty minutes later, the waitress from Queens was gone.
In her place stood an aristocrat from the hills of Fiesole. Dominic’s personal styling team—summoned to the penthouse in the dead of night—had worked with surgical speed. My hair was swept into an intricate, severe chignon secured with platinum pins. My face was sculpted with matte makeup that accentuated the sharp, high angles of my cheekbones, my lips painted a deep, dangerous crimson.
I wore a vintage Yves Saint Laurent tuxedo dress cut from midnight-blue silk, slashed low at the neckline, with four-inch Louboutin heels that clicked against the floor like gunshots. Around my throat was a diamond choker from the Rinaldi family vault—eight carats of cold, glittering fire.
Hidden beneath the silk lapel of the jacket was a micro-transmitter keyed directly to Dominic’s earpiece.
We took an unmarked black town car to the Meatpacking District.
The rain had stopped, leaving the cobblestone streets slick and gleaming under the amber streetlights. The Vault was hidden behind an abandoned meat-processing plant on Little West 12th Street. Two massive bouncers in heavy wool coats stood beside an unmarked iron door beneath a flickering neon sign.
Dominic, dressed in a plain black driver’s suit and a flat cap pulled low over his eyes, opened the car door for me.
As I stepped onto the wet cobblestones, his hand brushed against mine, slipping a small, cold object into my evening clutch.
A titanium switchblade.
"Three minutes," Dominic murmured into my ear as he leaned down, playing the role of the subservient driver. "The backroom is behind the third roulette table. Gabe has the perimeter covered."
"Watch my back, Rinaldi," I whispered.
"Always," he breathed.
I turned and walked toward the iron door, my heels clicking with absolute, arrogant confidence.
The two bouncers stepped forward, their arms crossing over their chests. "Private club, lady. Members only."
I didn't stop walking. I didn't even look at them.
I pulled out a heavy silver signet ring—the one Dominic had pulled from Luc’s pocket in the basement, bearing the falcon clutching the broken wheel—and held it up between two manicured fingers.
*“Muoviti, idiota,”* I snapped in a sharp, imperious Florentine accent that dripped with generational contempt. *"Vance mi sta aspettando. Se mi fai perdere un altro secondo, Falco ti farà tagliare la lingua prima dell'alba."*
*Move, idiot. Vance is waiting for me. If you make me waste another second, Falco will have your tongue cut out before dawn.*
The bouncers looked at the silver signet ring. Then they looked at the eight-carat diamond choker at my throat, the bespoke Italian tailoring, and the terrifying, cold arrogance in my eyes.
They didn't check an ID. They didn't ask for a password.
The larger bouncer shoved the iron door open, bowing his head with clumsy deference.
*"Prego, Signora."*
May you like
I stepped through the door, descending into the smoky, subterranean neon belly of the beast.
***
