STORAGE UNIT 4-B

“Give it to me, Alina,” he commanded softly, his blue eyes turning dark, the playful edge instantly vanishing.

I yanked the book back against my chest. “It’s poetry, Lorenzo. Unless you’re scared of a sonnet.”

“I’m scared of nothing.” His hand closed over mine, not violent, just absolute. “Which is exactly why I know you’re lying.”

He pried my fingers back one at a time, patient, like he had all the time in the world and my resistance was simply a formality he was choosing to enjoy. The book came free. The folded paper slipped loose from between the pages and fluttered toward the rug.

I lunged for it.

So did he.

Our hands collided over the paper, his palm crushing mine flat against the Persian rug, his whole body dropping down over me in the process. For one suspended second neither of us moved. His face hovered inches above mine, his breath ragged, his dark hair falling loose over his forehead for the first time since I’d met him — no longer the composed devil in a tailored suit, just a man who wanted something and hated that he had to fight a hostage for it.

“Move your hand,” he said quietly.

“Make me.”

His jaw ticked. Then his fingers pried mine open, one by one, and he lifted the paper out from under my palm.

He sat back on his heels and unfolded it.

I watched his face while he read it. I’d gotten good at reading Lorenzo De Luca’s face over the past week — the flicker before the mask slammed back down. This time the mask didn’t come back down fast enough.

His eyes went to the handwriting. Then to me.

“Where did you find this.”

“In a ledger. Top shelf.” No point lying about that part — he’d have the cameras.

“You know this handwriting.”

It wasn’t a question. I said nothing, which was its own answer, and we both knew it.

Lorenzo stood, refolding the map with slow, deliberate movements, like he was giving himself time to decide something. “Your father was in this library,” he said. “Recently enough that the dust hadn’t settled over that shelf.”

“That’s not possible. He’s been gone five years.”

“Then explain why there’s a hand-drawn map of my sub-levels with his handwriting on it, dated in ink that hasn’t even fully browned yet.” He crouched back down in front of me, close enough that I had to tip my chin up. “Someone has been in this house, Alina. Recently. And they left this exactly where you would find it.”

The floor seemed to tilt under me. “You think I set this up?”

“I think,” Lorenzo said, “that your father wanted you to find it. Which means he knew you’d end up in this library. Which means he knew you’d end up in this house at all.” His eyes searched mine, hunting for the lie. He didn’t find one, because there wasn’t one to find — my confusion was the only honest thing I’d given him all week. “Or someone wants me to think that.”

He rose, tucking the map into his breast pocket.

“That’s mine,” I said, scrambling to my feet. “He’s my father.”

“He’s a ghost who’s been running my family in circles for five years,” Lorenzo said flatly. “This map isn’t a family heirloom, little mouse. It’s a weapon. And I don’t hand weapons to my hostages.”

“Then what — you’re just going to lock me back in my room and pretend I didn’t see it?”

“No.” He turned, already walking toward the arched doorway, his shadow stretching long across the mahogany floor. “I’m going to take you down to Storage Unit 4-B myself. Tonight. And you’re going to tell me what ‘Cicero’ means to your father, or Dr. Evans starts losing fingers instead of sleep.”

He didn’t look back to see my face fall.

He didn’t need to.

CHAPTER NINE: STORAGE UNIT 4-B

Midnight found me standing in front of a biometric scanner flanked by two guards I didn’t recognize, Lorenzo’s hand wrapped around my upper arm like he expected me to bolt.

I didn’t. Not with Dr. Evans’s life sitting on the other side of this decision.

The elevator doors opened onto a corridor of raw concrete, nothing like the gilded museum upstairs. No chandeliers here. Just bare bulbs in wire cages and the low hum of industrial refrigeration.

“Cheerful,” I muttered.

“This is where the family keeps things it doesn’t want found,” Lorenzo said, steering me down the hall. “Ledgers. Weapons. Bodies, on a bad week.”

“Comforting.”

We stopped in front of a steel door stenciled 4-B. Lorenzo produced a key that looked older than the biometric scanners upstairs — actual metal, actual teeth — and the lock gave with a groan.

Inside: shelves of file boxes, a rack of rifles under plastic sheeting, and against the back wall, a marble bust on a pedestal, chipped at the nose, gathering dust.

Cicero.

My stomach dropped. Of course. Not a code word. A literal bust of the Roman statesman, tucked in the back corner like a joke only my father would find funny.

I walked toward it before Lorenzo could stop me, my bare feet silent on the concrete.

“Alina—”

“He used to keep spare keys behind a bust of Cicero in his study,” I said, my voice thinner than I wanted it to be. “When I was a kid. Said nobody ever suspects a dead Roman.”

I reached behind the marble head. My fingers found a groove in the wall that shouldn’t have been there — a hollow, hand-carved and deliberate.

A small brass key dropped into my palm.

Lorenzo was beside me in an instant, his hand closing over mine before I could even look at it properly. “Give it to me.”

“It’s my father’s.”

“It’s evidence in an investigation that’s cost my family fifty million dollars and half a dozen lives,” he said, his voice low and hard. “Hand it over, Alina. Now.”

I looked up at him — at the man who’d put a gun to Dr. Evans’s head twelve hours ago, who’d dragged me across a bedroom floor by my collar, who was standing three inches from me looking more rattled than I’d ever seen him.

And for the first time since the alley, I didn’t feel afraid of him.

I felt something far more dangerous.

“What happens to me,” I asked quietly, “once you have everything you need?”

Something shifted behind his eyes — a flicker of a question he clearly hadn’t let himself ask yet. His hand was still wrapped around mine, the small brass key trapped warm between our palms.

Before he could answer, the lights in the corridor outside cut to black.

A single gunshot rang out down the hallway, and every guard’s radio crackled to life at once.

“Boss — we have a breach. Sublevel three. They’re already inside.”