Blood Money

Luca

The dead man had no wallet, no phone, and no scent I could trust.

He lay beside the ruined dining table while red emergency lights painted the penthouse in alternating shades of blood and shadow. Chemical blocker covered whatever his wolf might have told us. The hospital soap underneath it remained, clean and sweet enough to make the back of my tongue taste wrong.

Emi photographed his hands before Kenji searched him. Hana sat against the wall with a folded napkin pressed to her cheek. She had refused the chair I offered and the order Kenji hadn't quite given. Heat colored her skin, but her attention stayed on the access module balanced across her knees.

“Don't move him until I finish the chain-of-custody record,” she said.

Kenji paused with two fingers inside the dead man's jacket. “He attempted to murder you.”

“That makes the evidence more useful, not less.”

“She has a point,” I said.

“Your agreement weakens it.”

I crouched beside the body. “Cruel. Accurate, but cruel.”

The attacker I'd thrown against the window was alive. Barely. Marco had arrived with a medical team and enough De Santis soldiers to start a smaller war in the hallway. Kenji allowed one medic through after Emi searched him down to his socks. The wounded man left under both families' guard. At least six people would spend the night arguing over who had authority to question him if he woke.

The poison had denied us the easier witness.

Emi cut away the dead man's sleeve. A square of skin near his wrist was lighter than the rest, the shape left by a medical band removed within the last day. Several old injection marks crossed the inside of his arm. They were too evenly spaced for street drugs and too deep for ordinary vaccines.

“Long-term treatment,” she said.

Hana leaned close without rising. “Or long-term control. Photograph the pattern and check it against suppressant implants.”

The dead man's palms had no gun calluses. The rifle was new to him, despite the accuracy of the attack. Someone had armed a patient, trained him just enough, and placed poison between his teeth to keep him from naming the clinic.

Kenji removed a flat steel key from the dead man's inner pocket and placed it on an evidence bag. No engraving. No teeth. A black strip ran along one edge.

“Cold-storage access,” Hana said without looking up. “Older dock systems use magnetic keys because salt damages the biometric readers.”

“You can identify the warehouse?” I asked.

“If the strip hasn't been wiped.” She held out her hand.

Kenji put the bag beside her instead. “You'll examine it after the medic treats your face.”

Hana lifted the bloody napkin. The cut was narrow, already slowing. “The medic is currently keeping your prisoner from dying.”

“We have another.”

“If you invite a second stranger into this penthouse tonight, Emi may begin searching internal organs.”

Emi didn't look up from the body. “Only if necessary.”

Hana returned to the module. “See? We're being practical.”

Her humor didn't hide the tremor in her fingers. Each breath carried more of her scent into the room, plum blossom warming over smoke. It settled on my tongue. My wolf pushed me toward her while my body supplied several suggestions that had nothing to do with evidence. Kenji's wolf answered from the other side of the table, not with challenge this time but the same demand: shelter, touch, keep.

Hana's shoulders eased when we both moved closer.

She registered it. Of course she did. Her gaze moved from my shoes to Kenji's, then rose to our faces.

“Interesting,” she said.

“You don't sound pleased,” I said.

“I sound like a woman whose body has developed opinions without consulting management.”

“Management appears hostile to all new proposals.”

“Management has survived several attempted takeovers.”

Kenji set the laptop on the floor within her reach. He took the position at her right shoulder while I settled on her left. We didn't touch her. The heat in her scent softened enough that I could think past it, and some of the strain left her mouth.

She opened the access log. I watched her work, watched concentration replace fear as numbers aligned beneath her hands. Blood still marked her cheek. Her hair had come loose around her face. She should have looked fragile sitting on the floor between two alphas after surviving an abduction and a gunfight.

She looked magnificent.

The executive override had come from the oyabun's office, but no one had used Masaru's desk terminal. The authorization traveled through a maintenance relay on the hotel's lower floors, disguised as a routine request from the security contractor. Hana stripped away the false headers one by one until a payment token appeared beneath them.

“They bought the relay credential this afternoon,” she said. “Six transfers, all below the amount that triggers an automatic review.”

“From Sato accounts?” Kenji asked.

“Not directly.”

Her hands steadied as the numbers gave her something pain couldn't take away. She traced the transfers through a hotel vendor, a Montreal refrigeration company, and a medical courier registered to an empty office in Queens. The path circled back to the nonexistent container from the summit.

“Same network,” Emi said.

Hana nodded. “Same accountant, too. Whoever built this likes mirrored amounts. The container charge was one hundred eighty-six thousand. The relay payments total half of that.”

“That isn't enough to identify a person,” Kenji said.

“No. People hide. Tax exemptions are more arrogant.”

She turned the laptop toward us. A charitable registration filled the screen beneath a gold crest I had seen on gala invitations since childhood.

Fondazione Santa Lucia operated clinics, food programs, and legal services in every city where my family kept territory. My grandfather founded it after the war. My father chaired the annual banquet. Raffaele controlled the accounts and treated each public donation like absolution purchased by the table.

Hana tapped the officer list. “The payment token belongs to an internal grant account. Only the executive director and board treasurer can release funds without a committee vote.”

Kenji read the second name. Then he looked at me.

I didn't need the screen. I had known whose signature would be there from the moment the crest appeared.

The money that opened Kenji's home belonged to my uncle Raffaele.