“No, you didn’t. You tried to save her.” I might not know anything about him. But I could sense that much.
“I should have known better. Something.” He swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing up down.
“You’re going after them now?”
His eyes turned hard. “They stole my life. And that girl’s life. They have it coming.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“You didn’t do this.”
“Do you know why he’s fixated on me? Is it because he saw us kiss?” I shook my head. “Wait, no, I met him before I met you. This doesn’t make sense."
"That's the piece I've been trying to dig out. I was given intel that he was tracking and keeping tabs on a woman who worked at Baines Data and Technology.”
“Oh God.” I breathed. All this time I was convinced this was happening to me because of sheer dumb luck, not because I might actually know anything.
“In the course of investigating him, I've seen what he's been up to since his father was arrested several months ago. Your name came up on his computer searches. Searches on your family. And I needed to know why. I thought you were involved with him."
I started to sit up and winced when my hand hit the edge of the tub. "I am not."
"Well, I know that now, but at the time, I didn't. So I needed to get close to you."
"Did you break?"
He furrowed his brow. "What do you mean?"
"You said everybody breaks under torture."
He shook his head. "No. But it was only a matter of time. Another four days, five, hell, maybe another month. Or maybe only hours, depending on how high the pain was. Anything can happen. Your brain sometimes just breaks."
"So Massimo… he just was looking me up?"
His gaze softened to something that looked a lot like pity. "As far as I can tell, he seems to have formed an attachment to you. He wants you. Maybe something you know."
"You mean he's fixated on me."
He nodded. "Yeah. Wherever you met him, his obsession grew from that, I think."
I leaned back against the tub, closing my eyes and trying to force all of those memories aside. "I met him, I don't know, five months ago, maybe. My future brother-in-law had some property Massimo wanted to buy. There was an exchange. It was basically easy. I happened to be in the office trying to grab Travis so that we could surprise my sister for her birthday."
"And he saw you then?"
"Yeah. I didn't see him again until the night I met you at the bar, and I honestly didn’t even recognize him at first. I literally don’t even know the guy."
“I have a theory about that. The Syndicate is having a sort of all-hands meeting in a few weeks where the top echelon will meet in person. Massimo has been making moves against some of the mid-tier players, bottlenecking everything around him before you get to the top. I think he's trying to take them all out in one fell swoop. To get access to that meeting, he would need money. A lot of it.”
“Is this why you started stalking me?”
He rolled his eyes. “I was hardly stalking.”
I lifted a brow.
“Okay fine. Light stalking. I needed to know your connection to him. Best way is to surveil. When I couldn’t find an obvious connection, I needed to get closer.”
I've been tracking his bank transactions. There's also a Ledger that supposedly holds information on all members of the Syndicate from top tier to bottom level runners. For years, most people thought it was a fairy tale. But as it turned out, Antonio Igno, Massimo's father, was what you’d call the record keeper. He had a record of every favor owed, every transaction, and the amount of those transactions, as well as the accounts they went to.”
“All in one place? That hardly seems wise.”
“I mean I understand. But still. I’m obviously not involved. I know nothing.”
“Actually, I think you know something without knowing something. These people are more paranoid about electronic transactions. They use them, but with anonymous numbered accounts. That Ledger pointed to exactly who the numbered accounts belong to, how much is in there, and what the money is marked for. A few months ago, intelligence agencies captured Antonio after someone had stolen the Ledger from him. We recovered the Ledger in pieces only to find that decoding it required a cipher. Eventually the cipher was recovered, but there's a third missing piece of the Ledger that ties all the names to the accounts, and I think Massimo has it. And now I'm planning to take it from him.”
“So, you're basically antagonizing him?”
“Let's just call it drawing him out for now. I think there's something he wants you for. Specifically, something you know. Some information you have from Baines Data.”
I shook my head. “I don't know anything. You can see the full list of clients that Baines has. All my bosses have access to them. You don't need me.”
“I think there's a piece we're missing. And until we know what that piece is, I'm just trying to keep you out of sight and keep you safe.”
“So you're saying this whole thing has been about keeping me safe?”
He swallowed hard and lifted his gaze to meet mine. “Not at first. At first I just wanted my life back. I won’t take out the Syndicate in a way that makes them all go to jail. Otherwise, they're just going to replace everyone and nothing will change. I want the information that will topple them. Those people are responsible for my father being dead. For my uncle being dead.”
My eyes went wide. “What?”
He jumped off the counter, only to lean against it and cross his arms. “My father and uncle were also spies. They both died on deep-cover Syndicate jobs.”
My stomach pitched. “Oh shit. I'm sorry.” I always felt like sorry was such a useless platitude. There wasn't much comfort to be conveyed in it.
Mentally, I tried to scan through any clients that had been decommissioned for non-ethical behavior. Or think through anyone with shady practices, but I had nothing.
“I guess maybe Massimo is still doing some business with Travis. I don't really know, but they sort of formed a friendship. Up until this past weekend, Travis thought maybe I was being mean or something, giving him the cold shoulder."
A soft chime went off, and he hopped off the counter, coming back to my hair.
Gently, he rinsed out the conditioning mask, and the soft soothing strokes had my eyelids drooping again. He was so gentle with his fingers I didn't even notice any knots.
"Keep going,” he urged.
"There was one time though. I came home from work, and you know that feeling you get when it's like someone has been in your place? I just couldn't shake it. I came home and I could feel it, like someone had been in my house. I thought I was going crazy."
His hands stopped moving. "When was this?"
"I don't know, two months ago maybe?" I only remembered because Christopher had cancelled plans to suddenly go out of town for a lad’s trip.
"What did you do?"
"I went straight down and got Tommy, the doorman, to come and check it out, but there was no one there."
"And in the time you left to go get Tommy, he might have just left."