11| WHAT THE PAPERS SAY

Dante's Pov

I was still thinking about the text when I got back to my office the next morning.

Unknown number. No follow-up. Just that one line sitting in Valerie's phone like something that had been waiting for the right moment to land.

I knew it was not Cassian. Cassian was loud when he was threatened. He grabbed arms in public corridors and made speeches. Whoever sent that text was something quieter. Something that had been watching long enough to know exactly when to speak.

I called her at eleven.

She picked up on the second ring. "I was wondering when you would call," she said.

"Did you sleep?" I said.

"Some," she said. "You?"

"Not much," I said. "I kept thinking about the text."

"So did I," she said.

"Have you had it traced?" I said.

"Marcus is working on it," she said. "Prepaid number. Probably a dead end but we are trying."

"Okay," I said. "What about the number itself. Did anything about it look familiar?"

"No," she said. "Nothing."

"Could be someone inside Cassian's operation," I said. "Someone who knows enough to be watching but is not Cassian himself."

"That is what I think," she said. "Cassian would have signed it. Cassian does not do anonymous. He wants you to know it is him."

"Agreed," I said. "So someone else knows what you are doing."

"Someone else has always known," she said. "I was never completely invisible. I just made sure the visible parts did not connect."

"They may be connecting now," I said.

"Yes," she said. "That is the part I am thinking about."

I leaned back in my chair and looked out at the city. It was a grey morning. Low cloud. The kind of day that made the buildings look heavier than usual.

"Can I ask you something?" I said.

"You can try," she said.

"The night I found you on that street," I said. "What were you going to do? If I had not stopped."

She was quiet for a moment. "Keep sitting there probably," she said. "Until I figured out the next step."

"You were not going to ask anyone for help?"

"There was nobody to ask," she said. "I did not have my phone. I did not have money. The people I thought were my friends turned out to be Cassian's contacts. My family was gone. There was nobody."

"You were completely alone," I said.

"Completely," she said. "And the strange thing is that sitting on that pavement was the first time in five years that nobody was telling me what I was allowed to do. It was terrifying. But there was something underneath it that was almost like relief."

"Because it was finally just you," I said.

"Yes," she said. "Exactly that."

I was quiet for a second. "I almost did not stop," I said. "I was late for something. I walked past you and got about thirty feet and then I turned around."

"What made you turn around?" she said.

"You were not crying," I said. "Everyone who sits on a pavement outside a building at night is either crying or on a phone. You were doing neither. You were just sitting there completely still. It was unusual enough that it stayed with me those thirty feet."

"So my composure saved me," she said.

"Your composure has always been the thing," I said.

She did not say anything for a moment. I could hear her breathing. Steady and even the way it always was.

"I want to move faster," I said. "On the strategy. I have been patient but after last night I think we need to accelerate."

"Define accelerate," she said.

"The remaining suppliers in his eastern network," I said. "There are three I have not approached yet. I was being careful about the timing. I think the timing is now."

"If you take all three at once it will be obvious," she said.

"It is already obvious," I said. "He knows it is you. He suspects it is me. The subtlety phase is over. I think we hit hard now while he is still off balance from the Hargrove loss."

She thought about it. "The board member he fired yesterday," she said. "Gerald Finn."

"What about him?" I said.

"He is angry," she said. "And he has access to documentation that Cassian does not know he copied before he left. I have been sitting on that relationship for six weeks waiting for the right moment to use it."

"Use it now," I said.

"That was my thought too," she said.

"Valerie," I said. "He is going to escalate when this hits. You understand that."

"I know," she said.

"The text last night was a warning," I said. "The next thing will not be a text."

"I know that too," she said. "I have been preparing for escalation since month three. I am not worried about what he does next. I am focused on what I do next."

"Okay," I said. "Then let us—"

"Dante," she said. "Hold on."

I waited.

"My assistant just sent me something," she said. I heard her clicking. Then silence. Then a breath that was not quite a sigh.

"What is it?" I said.

"Photographs," she said. "From last night. Someone got us leaving the gala together. The elevator lobby. There are four or five shots."

"How bad?" I said.

"They are not bad exactly," she said. "We are just walking. But the angle is close and we are close and it is—"

"Readable," I said.

"Very readable," she said.

"Where are they?" I said.

"Give me a second," she said. More clicking. Then she read it out. Her voice stayed completely level. "Dante Sterling's mysterious new lover — is this the real reason Thorne Industries is crumbling?"

I sat with that for a moment.

"Well," I said.

"Yes," she said.

"Does it bother you?" I said.

"No," she said. "Does it bother you?"

"No," I said.

"Then we have nothing to discuss about it," she said.

"Agreed," I said. "Forward me the article. I want to know which publication ran it first."

"Already sending it," she said.

My email pinged.

"Valerie," I said.

"Yes," she said.

"Last night," I said. "Before the text."

"I know," she said.

"I just want to make sure it is not—"

"It is not complicated," she said. "Unless you make it complicated."

"I am not going to make it complicated," I said.

"Good," she said. "Neither am I."