Chapter 9: Signals

Felix POV:

Sunlight hit my face like an insult.

I groaned, cracking one eye open just enough to confirm the world had, in fact, progressed into daytime without asking my permission first. The laptop screen had gone dark somewhere in the hours I'd apparently fallen asleep sitting up, my neck stiff from the angle I'd left it at, my back aching from a chair that had clearly never been designed for actual human comfort.

‘Looks like I've got a lot to do.’

I dragged myself upright, rubbing at my eyes, and pulled the laptop closer to check the code I'd left running overnight. Still processing. Still nowhere near confirming what I already suspected in my gut. I closed the lid without pushing it further, deciding my brain needed something other than tracker signatures before it would function properly again.

I went to shower first. Standing under water hot enough to actually wake me up, I let my mind wander over everything that had piled up in the last seventy two hours from the bar, the dock and that call. I pushed most of it aside. Later, I’d deal with all of it, once my head was actually clear.

Once I was dressed and somewhat human again, I took a slower walk through the penthouse, actually looking at the place for the first time since I'd stumbled in half-dead at three in the morning.

Now that the day was clear, the house had a vivid, almost sterile beauty to it, floor to ceiling windows framing a gray Helsinki skyline, pale wood floors that caught the light and threw it back soft instead of sharp, furniture that looked expensive in the understated way that only actually expensive furniture managed. 

Everything sat exactly where it should, nothing out of place, like the space had been staged for a magazine shoot rather than lived in by an actual person.

I liked it. It felt anonymous in a way that suited me right now.

I made my way downstairs eventually, phone in hand, I pulled the Luciano card out of my wallet, the one issued to every family member, the one that left a trail wide enough for anyone with half a brain to follow if they knew where to look. I casually set it on the kitchen counter, unused, and pulled out the other one instead. The one nobody in my family knew existed. The one that kept me invisible when invisibility actually mattered.

That settled, I headed out to find clothes. I'd packed light in the rush out of Venice, and what I had on now, a plain black tee and sweats, comfortable enough for lounging around the penthouse but nowhere close to appropriate for anything beyond that, wasn't going to work long term.

I picked the first high end store I passed, mostly out of convenience, though the second I stepped through the door I understood exactly why the staff's eyes cut toward me and stayed there a beat too long. Sweats and a t-shirt weren't exactly the uniform this place expected from its usual clientele. I couldn't blame them for the once-over. I'd have given myself the same look.

Nobody approached me. I browsed a rack near the entrance for a solid five minutes, waiting for someone, anyone, to acknowledge I existed, and got nothing but polite, distant smiles from staff who'd clearly already decided I wasn't worth their time.

Eventually one of them drifted close enough that I caught her attention on purpose. "Excuse me."

She turned, expression carefully neutral. "Can I help you find something? We do have a more casual line in the back, if you're looking for something budget friendly."

I almost laughed. "I was actually hoping to see everything. Shirts, jackets, shoes. Whatever you've got in my size."

Her expression flickered, polite skepticism barely masked. "Everything's quite an investment, sir."

"That's fine."

"I mean the full collection runs well into—"

"I heard you the first time." I pulled the card from my pocket and set it on the counter beside her, unbothered. "Start wherever you'd like."

She glanced at the card, then back at me, and something in her posture shifted almost instantly, the practiced disinterest sliding into something far more attentive. "Of course. Right this way."

Funny, how fast a smile turned genuine once the right piece of plastic hit the counter.

By the time I finished, I checked the time. Nine.

My stomach reminded me, loudly, that I hadn't eaten anything substantial in longer than I wanted to admit. I found a small café two streets over, ordered something simple, and had barely taken my first bite when my phone buzzed against the table.

Leo.

I answered around a mouthful of food. "Hey."

"You're alive. Good. I was starting to wonder." Leo's voice came through easy, a little dry, the specific brand of humor he'd perfected over years of dealing with exactly my kind of chaos. "How's Finland treating you?"

"Cold. Quiet. I like it so far."

"Good, because I need to talk to you about the next few days." A pause, papers shuffling on his end. "Jack got pulled into something last minute, some emergency with a client, didn't say much, just told me to handle your booking situation while he puts out whatever fire he's dealing with."

"Everything okay with him?"

"Should be. He didn't sound stressed, just busy. You know how he gets." Leo's tone shifted, businesslike now. "Anyway. I've got you set up under a new identity for anything local banking, transport, all of it. Should hold for at least a month before we need to rotate it."

"A month's more than enough."

"That's what you said about Prague."

I huffed something close to a laugh. "Prague was unfortunate."

"Prague ,was you underestimating how fast someone could find you." He said it lightly, but there was an edge of genuine concern underneath it. "You sure you're not walking into the same mistake twice?"

"I'm being careful."

" Of course you are." A pause. "Why leave Venice at all, though? Thought your family was still there."

"Just some old stuff," I said instead, keeping my voice light. "Nothing worth getting into.”

"Well what a bummer I was planning on dropping by." Leo exhaled, and I could picture him leaning back in whatever chair he did most of his work from, the same tired patience he'd used on me for years. "Just watch your back out there, alright? Whatever's going on, it's clearly bigger than you getting drugged."

"I know."

"Do you, though?" He let that sit for a second, and I could hear him debating whether to push further. But he didn't. "Look, I'm not trying to lecture you. I just don't like knowing you're out there alone with whatever this actually is."

I didn't answer that one right away, picking at the rest of my food instead, thinking about a tracker buried three layers deep in my own system and a voice on the phone that had called me kitten like he had every right to.

"I'm not entirely alone," I said finally, though I wasn't sure who I was trying harder to convince.

"That supposed to be reassuring?"

"It's the truth."

"Fine. Keep your secrets." I could hear the smile in his voice even through the exhaustion. "Just answer when I call. That's all I'm asking."

"I'll be fine," I said eventually.

"Sure you will." He didn't sound convinced, but he also didn't push. "I'll send the new documents over by tonight. Try not to disappear again before I do."

"No promises."

"Wow. Comforting, as always."

He hung up before I could respond, and I sat there for a moment longer, finishing my food slower than I needed to, the quiet of the café doing very little to settle the unease the last few days had left sitting in my chest.

---

I spent the rest of the morning doing something almost embarrassingly normal, wandering through a handful of shops, picking up the small things a place needed to feel less like a hideout and more like somewhere a person actually lived. Sheets that weren't the stiff, hotel quality ones already on the bed. A decent coffee maker, since whatever machine came with the penthouse looked like it required an engineering degree to operate. A few groceries, enough to avoid living entirely off café food for the next week.

It felt strange, doing something this ordinary while half my attention stayed locked on the tracker code still sitting unfinished on my laptop back home. But my body needed the break more than my brain wanted to admit, and there was something almost soothing about walking through unfamiliar streets, blending into a crowd that had no idea who I was or why I might be worth following.

I even let myself slow down a little near the third shop, running my hand over a stack of throw blankets like a person with an actual normal life instead of one currently running from at least two unrelated threats. It felt good, in a strange, borrowed way. Like trying on someone else's routine and seeing how it fit.

By early afternoon, arms full of bags, I made my way back to the building. The doorman nodded at me on the way in, already recognizing my face after less than a full day, and I gave him a small nod back before heading straight for the elevator.

I hit the button for my floor, shifted the bags higher against my chest, and waited, my mind already drifting back to the code still sitting open on my laptop, the tracker signature I hadn't finished confirming yet, the growing, unresolved suspicion sitting cold and quiet in my gut.

The doors slid open.

I froze.

Renato stood there, one hand tucked into his pocket, expression easy and unbothered, like stepping into a random elevator in a random building was the most natural thing in the world for him to be doing.

For half a second my brain simply refused to process it. I actually looked past him, toward the hallway behind him, some part of me convinced I'd somehow wandered into the wrong floor, the wrong building, maybe the wrong city entirely.

 Because this made no sense. A man who lived four doors down from me back in Venice, a man who I just got to know his name a few days ago despite four years of living across the hall from him, was somehow standing in front of me in Helsinki like the distance between those two facts meant absolutely nothing to him.

He stepped inside slowly, unhurried, gaze settling on me with that same infuriating calm I remembered from a bar floor covered in broken glass and blood that hadn't been his.

"Small world," he said, like that explained anything at all.

I didn't move. Didn't breathe, for a second.

My mind raced through every possible explanation and landed on nothing. Absolutely nothing. He couldn't have followed me here. I hadn't told him where I was going, hadn't told anyone outside Leo, Jack, and Matthew, and none of them had a single reason to talk to a man I barely knew existed a week ago.

I ran through the logistics of it anyway, some frantic, disbelieving part of my brain trying to force the pieces into a shape that made sense. Helsinki wasn't exactly a tourist hub someone stumbled into by accident. It wasn't on the way to anywhere. Nobody just happened to end up in this specific building, on this specific floor, stepping into this specific elevator, at exactly the moment I did.

Unless he'd known. Unless this had never been a coincidence at all.

But we weren't close. Four years of living four doors apart, barely a glance exchanged between us, and one drunk mistake had somehow turned all of that into something I still didn't have a name for.

And yet here he was, not across a hallway, not four doors down, but standing right in front of me in a country neither of us had any business being in at the same time, looking at me like this was simply the next natural step in whatever had started that first drunken night.

I studied his face for any sign of it, any small crack in that calm, unbothered mask he seemed to wear permanently, and found nothing. No smugness. No slip. Just that same easy patience, like he had all the time in the world and absolutely nowhere else to be.

There was no reason for him to be standing in this elevator

.

No reason at all.

The elevator door slid shut the second he stepped in, and just like that, we were stuck together.

And it felt sook akwardddd