Too Clean To Be Innocent

Antonio slowly lifts his head, and his autumn eyes settle on the mirror.

They settle on me.

I know he can't see through the glass. I know it's a mirror on his side, nothing but his own reflection and a bare concrete wall. But he stares at it like he's looking right at me, like he can feel me standing here, and a shiver runs down my spine.

"I want to be alone with him," I say without looking at Marco.

"No," Marco says instantly, his voice low and firm. "You can't, Brianna. He could be dangerous. We don't know who he is or who he works for. He could have a knife in his boot or a hundred other ways to hurt you."

"He's cuffed."

"That doesn't matter."

I say nothing. I keep my eyes on Antonio, who hasn't looked away and is still smirking at the glass.

"He won't hurt me," I say quietly. "Not here."

Marco is silent for a long moment. I can feel him weighing it, and I can sense the exact second he decides he's too tired and too heartbroken to fight me tonight. He sighs, long and heavy, and nods toward the guards.

The door opens, and I walk in alone.

The door clicks shut behind me. The room is colder than it looked from the other side, and it smells like iron. The guard steps back into the corner at a nod from Marco’s voice in the speaker. Antonio’s eyes track every step I take, the way a cat follows a bird across a lawn.

I pull out the chair opposite him and sit. The metal legs scrape against the floor.

For a while, neither of us speaks.

“Well,” he says finally, his voice low and lazy. “Aren’t you going to say something, princess? Tell them I saved you.”

“That’s not the issue here.”

His brow lifts slightly.

“The issue,” I continue, keeping my voice even, “is why. And what you were doing there. A man happens to be riding past a private funeral at the exact moment someone tries to kill my father, and he happens to have a gun, and he happens to be able to shoot like that.” I lean forward. “It’s too convenient.”

He doesn’t say a word.

“You can talk now,” I tell him, “and you’ll be given a lesser punishment. I can make sure of that.” I hold his gaze. "You do know that if they run a background check and find something, you won't be spared. Not by anyone. Not even me."

He leans back in his chair, as far as the cuffs allow. He crosses his arms over his chest, and the ink on his forearms shifts with the movement. The smirk slides back onto his lips, slow and deliberate.

It's a look that says, "Go ahead. I dare you."

My jaw tightens. "Suit yourself," I say, and walk out without looking back. I can feel his eyes on me all the way to the door.

*****

For two days, I wait.

I pace my room. I sit beside my father's bed while the doctors come and go with their grim faces and murmured words. I eat when Marco makes me. I sleep in short, broken pieces. And every few hours, a man knocks on my door with a new report.

Nothing.

Marco's people tear through every record they can find. They check the plates on the bike, the phone number we took off him, the old addresses, and the faces in the street cameras. They call in favors from men who owe us debts.

The answer is always the same: there's nothing.

No criminal record, no family, no known enemies, no ties to anyone we know. Just a biker. A man with a motorcycle and a habit of stopping by a small noodle shop on the east side of the city.

On the second afternoon, Marco sends two men to question the owner.

They come back with nothing, too. She's a woman in her fifties, they say, who stares at them over the steaming pots as if they've asked her about the weather.

She doesn't know his name. She doesn't know where he lives. "He's just a customer," she tells them, wiping her hands on her apron. "He orders the spicy beef, eats, and leaves."

Marco sets the report on my desk and rubs his tired eyes.

"Either he's telling the truth," he says, "or he's the best liar I've ever met."

I look down at the page, then up at the window, where the gray evening presses against the glass.

Nobody is that clean, I think.

Nobody.

On the third morning, Marco finds me in my father's study. I'm sitting behind the great oak desk in the chair I've never once dared to take, with a stack of reports in front of me that I don't understand and a cold cup of coffee I haven't touched.

The room still smells like him—cigars and leather and expensive cologne. My father is upstairs, hooked to machines, and the doctors won't say whether he'll wake up.

"We're done with him," Marco says.

I look up. "Done?"

"Three days, Brianna. Nothing." He drops a thin folder onto the desk. "No record, no family, no connections. The men are tired of feeding him, and every hour he stays in this house is another hour someone out there is planning their next move." He pauses. "I say we let him go. Drive him out past the city limits, tell him to keep quiet, and be done with it."

"Or?"

Marco hesitates.

"Or we put a bullet in him and make sure there's no loose end," he says quietly.

The silence stretches. I fold my hands on the desk to stop them from shaking. "No," I say.

"Brianna..."

"He saved my life." My voice comes out steadier than I expect. "In front of every man in that cemetery. If we throw him out like trash or worse, what does that say about us? That the Dimitrous don't pay their debts?"

"He could be working with the enemy."

"Then I want him where I can see him." I meet his eyes. "If he's clean, he's earned a place. If he's dirty, it's better to keep him close than to turn him loose and have him come back with a rifle. Either way, he doesn't leave this house."

Marco's jaw tightens. "The men won't like this."

"I'm not asking them to like it." I stand, and my legs feel like water, but I hold myself tall. "I'm the heir. Until my father wakes, I'm the one who decides."

For a long moment, Marco simply looks at me, and I see something shift behind his tired eyes—surprise, perhaps. Or respect. Then he bows his head just a little.

"As you wish."