Chapter Five

Sam’s door was still locked when I checked.

I stood behind and listened for movement and heard nothing. I knocked twice, nothing.

I went to the kitchen and made eggs and toast and left the plate outside his door with a note folded against it.

*Take care of yourself today. I love you.*

I stood there a moment longer than necessary. Then I picked up my bag and left.

I took a cab straight to the hospital. At the entrance I found myself lost in thought.

I couldn’t go in. I was scared to face reality. I left Sadie a text,  turned back, and headed for work. It was very unlike me.

The office was loud with the particular energy of a floor that had a meeting to prepare for. Andrea was already at her desk when I arrived, highlighter in hand, a stack of quarterly reports beside her coffee.

She looked at me once. Set the highlighter down.

“What happened?”

I shook my head and sat down and opened my laptop.

She didn’t push. She turned back to her screen and said nothing and that,  the specific kindness of not pushing was the thing that almost broke me right there at my desk that morning.

“I’m here,” she said quietly. “Whatever it is.”

I nodded. 

The conference room was filled at ten.

Cassius was already at the head of the table when we walked in — jacket on, one hand resting on the surface, reviewing something on his laptop with the focused stillness of someone who had been there long enough to have already formed opinions about everyone who hadn’t arrived yet.

Andrea leaned close as we took our seats. “He’s really something isn’t he,” she murmured.

I almost laughed. Almost.

The meeting had a rhythm to it and his rhythm, set from the moment he opened his laptop. Cassius asked questions that were short and specific, listened to the answers without showing interest, and moved on. The floor was alert in the particular way of people who didn’t want to be caught unprepared.

Then he looked at the variance report on the screen.

“The Q4 logistics projection shows a fourteen percent growth assumption across the eastern distribution corridor.” He looked up. “What’s the methodology behind that figure? Because the port access data from the last two quarters doesn’t support it.”

Silence.

“Anyone?”. He repeated. 

Still silence. 

People shifted in their chairs. 

I looked at the figure on the screen. Looked at the port access data in the appendix beside it. The answer was there — it wasn’t complicated, it was just layered, the kind of thing that required holding three numbers simultaneously and understanding what they were saying to each other.

“The fourteen percent assumes the new shipping contracts activate in October,” I said. “But two of the three contracts have a ninety-day onboarding clause. They won’t be operational until January at the earliest. The realistic Q4 figure is closer to six percent. The projection wasn’t wrong — it just didn’t account for the activation timeline.”

The room was quiet.

Cassius looked at me. 

“And the implications for the western corridor projections?”

“They’ll need to be revised proportionally. Probably eight to ten percent depending on which contracts activate first.”

He held my gaze for a moment with no particular expression attached to it. 

“Your name?”

“Sienna Sinclair”.

“Revise the projections by the end of the week,” he said. “Can I trust you with that?”

“You can”

He moved to the next item.

Andrea pressed her knee against mine under the table. I kept my eyes forward.

His phone buzzed midway through the second agenda item. He glanced at it, stood without explanation, and left the room.

Andrea watched the door close behind him. “Okay,” she said under her breath, turning to me with a look that had entirely abandoned professionalism. “First of all—”

“Andrea.”

“The way he looked at you—”

“We’re in a meeting.”

“The meeting basically ended when he left.” She turned fully in her chair. “You knew the answer and he knew you knew and that—”

My phone rang.

The hospital’s number is on the screen.

I answered before the second ring. “Hello?”

“Ms. Sinclair.” A voice I didn’t recognize. Careful. Measured. “This is nurse Trudy.. I’m afraid I have some difficult news regarding your mother.”

“She passed away about fifteen minutes ago. I’m so sorry. It happened very suddenly — her condition deteriorated rapidly overnight. We did everything—”

I was already standing.

“Ms. Sienna, are you there?”. The nurse kept repeating.

I don’t remember the walk to the elevator. I remember Andrea’s voice behind me saying my name. I remember the lobby doors and the cold air and then I was in a cab and the city was moving past the windows. The drive to the hospital felt like forever. 

Sadie was in the corridor outside Elena’s room.

She saw me coming and her face collapsed and that was the moment it became real — not the phone call, not the cab, not the hospital doors. Sadie’s face.

We held each other in the corridor while the hospital continued around us, indifferent and necessary.

“I stepped out,” Sadie said. Her voice was barely there. “Twenty minutes. I just stepped out to get coffee and when I came back she was—” She stopped. “The nurses said it was very fast. That she wouldn’t have—” Another stop. “She didn’t suffer, Sienna.”

The doctors came. Kind faces, careful voices, the whole practiced language of consolation. I stood inside it and nodded at the right moments and felt nothing yet, which I knew from experience meant I would feel everything later when there was no one left to hold it together for.

I held Sadie’s hand and looked at the closed door of my mother’s room and did not go in.

Not yet.

Cassius POV

My phone buzzed mid-meeting.

It was from Max.

I stepped out without explanation and took the call in the corridor.

“I’ve got him,” Max said. “One of your father’s guards. Caruso. I’ve been watching him for three days. He’s home now.” A pause. “Everything points to him being the mole. I’m sure of it”

“Tonight,” I said.

“Tonight,” Max agreed.

I put the phone in my pocket and went back into the conference room. 

“We will continue tomorrow”. I told the team. “And Sienna I expect —“

“Where’s she?”

“Using the bathroom” Andrea replied. 

“Pass my message to her would you”

Andre nodded. 

I left immediately. 

I cancelled everything after noon. Met Max at the parking structure on Eleventh at two. We sat in the car and waited for dark.

Caruso stepped to meet two ladies out of a car and welcomed them into his home, kissing both on the cheeks and wrapping his arms around their waist. We were determined to make our move this evening. 

After thirty minutes Max and I went directly to his door and knocked.

Caruso opened the door, stunned to see us, he looked back and looked back at us. We let ourselves in.

Both ladies were half-naked when we walked in. I asked them to put on their clothes and leaveand brought Caruso to his own living room and sat him down.

He tried the language of innocence first. Confusion, then indignation, then a performance of cooperation that was just stalling dressed differently. I let Max handle the first twenty minutes. I stood by the window and watched the street below and listened to Caruso’s answers get shorter and more careful and understood he wasn’t going to give us anything willingly.

I turned around.

“Four of us,” Caruso said finally, forty minutes in, holding his ribs. “We were contacted through an unknown number. We were given advances. All we had to do was say which routes the products were headed. The other two were men who worked for the Castellos. The other was my friend Gio.”

“What else?”

“I swear that’s all.”

Max pulled out a gun and aimed it at his head. “I’m giving you five seconds”. 

Carusso paused for a moment and Max placed the tip directly on his head. .

Caruso looked at the floor. “The contractor told us to get rid of the Castello men. Gio handled it.” He stopped. “Gio didn’t make it.”

Max looked at him. “The hospital. Today. What were you doing there?”

His jaw tightened.

Max hit him once. Sharp, open-handed. Caruso’s head came back up.

“You went to the illegal drug hub and headed for the hospital. Max said angrily.  What was that for?”

“A woman,” he said. “Cancer patient. The contractor sent me the room number. Said it would accelerate the cancer. Make it look natural.” He swallowed. “I didn’t know who she was. I didn’t ask. The contractor told me I would be exposed if I didn’t get this done. I swear I’m telling the truth”

The room went very quiet.

“Who contracted you,” I said.

“I don’t know. I swear I don’t—”

“Think harder.”

He was still talking when the door came off its hinges.

Two men barged in and immediately rained countless gunshots on us, hitting Max on his shoulder and the back of his leg. We dropped behind the chairs and returned fire. The whole thing lasted eight seconds and then stopped.

Silence.

He was already trying to sit up. That was the thing about Max he’d bleed quietly before he’d ask for anything. He wasn’t hit anywhere vital. I checked myself.

I came around the furniture.

Caruso was dead. Hit directly in the head and severely on the chest. 

I stood in the stillness and understood exactly what had happened. It was Caruso they wanted. Someone had been watching Caruso the same way Max had. He was dead the moment he accepted the contract. 

Whoever was behind this was trying to cut off any loose ends. It had to be someone with a lot of financial influence. What I couldn’t wrap my head around was why they’d kill a cancer patient. It didn’t add up. 

“We’ve got nothing,” Max said.

I looked at Caruso lying down in a pool of his blood. “This is bigger than I thought”