Chapter 6

Lorenzo's POV

Just like a vampire, I was never seen during the day but my business hours were at night time.

The meeting was supposed to be civil.

That was the word Grayson had used when he briefed me on the drive over. 

A sit-down between men who had grievances and enough shared interest to keep those grievances from becoming expensive.

Viktor Sehn had other ideas. I had known Viktor for eleven years. We had done business twice — once cleanly, once not. He was the kind of man who smiled with all his teeth when he wanted something and none of them when he didn't. Tonight, across the long table in the private room above the restaurant, he was showing none of them.

"The account," he said, without preamble. "The three billion that moved through Rosfrith's bank. We know Matteo Rossi is a fictional Enzo. We've known each other for eight months."

The room had six men in it besides myself and Grayson. Viktor's, positioned at the exits. The message was architectural — they had arranged the space before we arrived, which meant this had never been a preliminary meeting.

This was an ambush dressed in linen napkins.

Noted, I thought and filed. I had two guns on me and a jack knife, also my height was more of an advantage and I was very good at hitting the bullseye on people's forehead.

"The money moved cleanly," I said. "Whatever came after was the bank's failure of discretion, not mine."

"The money," Viktor said, leaning forward, "had our name attached to three of the source transactions. The council has been asking questions, Enzo. Questions about exposure. About whether a man who blew up a mine and moved three billion in dirty diamonds is still an asset or a liability."

There it was.

Asset or liability, the council's language. 

Viktor hadn't come here to negotiate — he had come here to deliver a verdict and see whether I would receive it quietly.

I looked at him for a long moment then asked. "Who sent you?" 

"Does it matter?"

"It tells me how much time I have." My hand was already on my gun. “And what are you trying to say?”

Viktor smiled then all the teeth. "Less than you think and we think you're working with Rosfrith and you want to keep the fucking money all to yourself.”

I rose up to my feet. “Then I'd like to see you try.”

He nodded once to the man at the door.

What happened next took approximately four minutes, which is longer than people imagine when they picture violence and shorter than it feels from the inside.

The first man rushed at me with a jackknife and I disarmed him with a kick that sent him crashing into the wall. I withdrew my gun and shot him twice before he could get up.

The second came with a bottle. I caught his wrist, turned it, heard the crack that meant he would not be using that hand for several weeks, and used his own forward momentum to put him into the wall behind me.

Grayson had the third man and he slammed his head repeatedly onto the table until his face looked like smashed tomatoes.

Viktor himself did not fight. Men like Viktor never fought. They directed, they funded, they arranged — and when their arrangements went wrong they had the specific wide-eyed look of people who had never genuinely believed consequences would reach them personally.

They were reaching him now and  I crossed the room before he could escape. He backed against the wall. I took him by the collar of his very expensive jacket and I looked at him the way I looked at problems I had already solved in my head and was simply now executing.

"Tell the council," I said quietly, "that the liability question has been answered."

"Enzo—"

"And Viktor." I held his gaze and made sure he understood that what I was about to say was not a threat. Threats implied uncertainty. "If I hear my name from their direction again, I will not come to a meeting. I will come to them directly."

I released him. He slid sideways along the wall, his hands shaking with fear.

I turned and the fourth man — the one I had not accounted for, the one who had been behind the curtained alcove at the back of the room — hit me from behind with something that caught the left side of my jaw and snapped my head sideways. 

The follow-through caught my brow on the edge of the table as I went down. Everything went blank for one second  and then the world came back in pieces.

I licked off the liquid on my lips. Blood.

My hands found the table edge. I was upright before the man had finished congratulating himself.

“You've just earned yourself a ticket to hell.” Grayson caught up to him before I did and he headbutted him then slammed him into the wall.

A clean shot to the head and his body crumpled to the floor. Good riddance.

We left through the service exit. Grayson drove while I was sitting in the passenger seat and pressed two fingers against the cut above my brow and looked at the blood on them with the detached interest of a man taking inventory.

"The council will move within the week," Grayson said. He was using his operational voice — flat, forward-looking, already three steps ahead. "We need to get ahead of the Delacroix connection before Viktor talks."

"Viktor won't talk." I spoke through the pain. “He's a pussy, will bark but not bite.”

"You can't know—"

"Viktor," I said, "is more afraid of what I'll do with the information I have on him than he is of the council. He will say nothing. He'll report that the meeting was inconclusive and spend the next month rearranging his finances."

Grayson was quiet for a moment. "And the man behind the curtain?"

"Handle it."

Two words. Grayson heard everything in them that needed to be heard. He nodded once and didn't ask again.

I turned my face back to the window. The estate gates appeared ahead, stone and iron, lit from below in the way that made them look permanent.

I had built this. Every stone, every gate, every layer of protection that stood between me and the world that wanted me dead. I had built it over years, with money and strategy and the particular ruthlessness of a man who had once had everything taken from him and decided it would never happen again.

Jovan, I thought.

He was inside those gates awake, probably — he was always awake, I had noticed this, the way he held sleep at arm's length like he didn't trust what it might cost him.

I wondered, and I hated that I wondered, because wondering about Jovan Rosfrith was a habit I had not been able to break in four years and apparently captivity had only made it worse.

"We're here," Grayson said.

The car stopped. I opened the door. The night air hit the cut on my brow and made itself known.

From upstairs, I saw the light of his room on. He was probably thinking of how to escape. I told myself I'd retire for the night and leave Dr. Marian to deal with him.

But I found myself walking to his room.