CHAPTER 14
DARIO
Before I aged out of the system, Nico and I were with a couple who left us on our own in the apartment for weeks at a time. We lived on nearly expired eggs the convenience store owner around the block sold to us at a discount. Sometimes he threw in a loaf of not-quite-stale bread. In the summer and fall, I made the potatoes we grew in the strip of soil between the apartment building’s fence and the next property over. We ate. We lived to plan revenge.
I don’t need much. I can survive on what I find in the dirt.
When I’ve felt powerless, that always calmed me. Nico and I could cut it all off and start over with nothing.
There’s more than Nico in my life now, and I am not comforted.
It’s not enough that I feel safe in the world. Because of me—my actions and my lies—Sarah does not.
What if I made the peace she wants?
Could we live on potatoes and weary eggs in anonymous peace, without the enriching soil of revenge?
No. It’s impossible.
I decide this in the time it takes me to go through the door under the stairs and pass through to the security room. I’m in front of the flickering bank of closed-circuit monitors when I realize what happened.
She got to me.
I’ve traded my comfort for hers.
My password and thumbprint turn on a monitor behind a sliding panel, revealing a secret monitor.
She got to me, and I didn’t even see it coming.
The secret monitor flickers on. There’s a moment where I hold my breath. Nico’s supposed to be the only person on this screen, but this time, after his missed meeting with Oria, I fear it could be Peter, or Massimo, or some curious Colonia trying to climb into a higher position.
But it’s Nico—outside, in a park, walking along a trail. The video is vertical and shaking with his stride. Behind him, joggers come up fast, passing with either annoyed looks in his direction or laser-tight focus on their zone.
Relief floods my veins with the threat of complacency.
I open the conversation with a bark to shake myself out of it.
“Your woman’s been in a state of panic for days.”
“They were using my equipment to find you.” He throws himself onto a bench set against a wall. He looks behind him anyway. “Tell her I’m fine.”
There’s no honey-bear-boo-boo in his manner when he relays the message. No flourishes or sweetness. He and I are very much alike without a woman present.
“You’re calling off schedule,” I say. “That’s not fine.”
“I couldn’t risk it. There was a wall broken down in my old apartment.”
He’s describing the wall I chainsawed to get to Sarah.
“You didn’t leave anything behind. Unless they can read the DNA in the sheets.”
“I left a passport in the wall… just in case.”
My fingertips wake into a numb tingle. “Did it have your name?”
“Nah. Fake name. It was the picture. I was thinner and younger. Coulda been me with more hair and a goatee. Coulda been some Maltese asshole. Took some questions. They started out as jokes, but it got pretty uncomfortable.”
“Do you need to get out?”
Oria would be thrilled if Nico extracted himself, and frankly, I wouldn’t be too upset about it either.
“Yes, but no.” The shadow of a jogger with a swinging ponytail passes over him. “We have… they have Dafne.”
“Where?” I lean forward enough to jump into the screen.
“I don’t know. There’s video. Supposedly too nasty to see more than the metadata from the security logs. Your security logs. It was the greenhouse security cam.”
“I saw them trash it.” I flip open the keyboard and pull up the greenhouse footage to look for the nastiness he’s talking about. “Saw NYSD sniffing around.”
He looks away, checks behind him, but it’s still a wall. “Next night.”
“Do you have the timecode, or do I have to scroll through every fucking hot minute?”
He rattles it off from memory.
I fast forward, expecting the feed was cut at some point, but though the camera wasn’t hidden, when the Colonia and NYSD took over, they didn’t shut it.
When three men and a woman appear in the abandoned greenhouse, I freeze the frame.
This is why they left the camera alone.
“Shit.” I leave the video frozen and lean back. I don’t want to see what happens just yet. “They do not like traitors.”
“They do not.”
“Is she alive, or do I have to watch to the end?”
“No clue. The plotline’s not in the metadata.”
My finger hovers over the spacebar. All I have to do is tap it, and it’ll play again. Once I see this video—no matter how it ends—I’ll be pissed off. My decisions will be painted red.
“Let’s say she’s dead.” I move away my finger. “What then?”
“Business as usual. We chip away. We have them where we want them.”
“They just found our center of operations and destroyed it.”
“Wrong. They took forever to take advantage of your mistake and lost you, lost Sarah, lost everything. They have a building they can’t use. They look like they’re in control, but ever since Sarah’s been with you, nothing’s gone right for them.”
“You’re closest to losing when your opponent’s cornered,” I say.
“Also? Something about a man with nothing left to lose, and yada yada, danger.”
“What if she’s alive?”
“She’ll be hollowed. She won’t be allowed to speak. So she can’t say what happened or who did it.” His jaw is tight, and his words come out in hard, muffled barks that won’t alert anyone but me to how angry he is. This is not the man who calls Oria boo or—for her sake—underplays the danger he’s in.
“Calm down.”
“I hate them so much. And being here, talking to these men. The righteous. The pious. The way they think they’re fucking superior. I’m getting more and more pissed off every day I can’t strangle someone.”
“Do you need out?”
He hesitates. Averts his gaze. Exhales slowly.
“Today, please,” I say.
“Fine. Let’s make a deal. If you get to the end of that video, and Dafne’s dead, I’m out in forty-eight hours. If she’s alive, I’ll stay to get her location. I’ll stay to help the rescue. Then I’m out.”
“And if they kill her before we get there?”
“Set me up a flight out of Teterboro airport the next day. Tell Oria I’ll meet her there.”
“Agreed.”
“Good.”
“I like it,” I reply instead of looking at the video.
“Today, please,” he says.
I look at the frozen frame of the greenhouse. I recognize two of the men from Peter’s inner circle. The third has a blurred face. A tap of the key to the next frame will clear it up and their identities will be known.
“If she’s alive,” I say, stalling further. “They hollowed her. Like you said.”
“Like I said.” He looks past the camera into some unknown future on his side of the city. He pinches the skin on his chin. Thinking.