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“I know,” she whispers.

She squeezes once, then she lets go, picks up the fork, and goes back to the eggs.

“The berries,” she says, after a while.

“They were going to turn,” I say.

“Right,” she says.

She eats through the rest of the tray, toast, jam, the last of the coffee, all of it. I sit with my elbows on my knees and think about a promise I made on a warehouse floor that means something different this morning than it did yesterday.

I’m going to find OB6. That hasn’t changed. But when I do, I’m settling two debts. Lavro’s, and the one I owe a dead man I didn’t give enough time to finish what he’d started.

“We find OB6,” I say, and she nods, puts the empty tray aside.

“The berries were a good call,” she says.

The corner of my mouth moves. I pick up the tray and head downstairs.

Marka’s already in the kitchen, phone out, and jaw set. He puts it on the counter when I walk in.

“Lorenzo called. You weren’t here, so I answered. There’s an emergency Crown meeting,” he says. “Tonight.”

I set the tray down. “Santiago.”

“Santiago,” Marka confirms. “Got to the shell trace and went straight to Lorenzo. Lorenzo’s calling everyone in before it blows up in the council room.”

I’d given Adrianos two weeks and myself more time than that, and now Santiago’s blown the whole timeline apart.

I pour a coffee I don’t need and stand at the counter.

Santiago getting there first is the worst version of this. Adrianos can talk his way through most rooms, but Santiago doesn’t give anyone room to talk. He comes in decided, and he stays decided, and he’s been looking for a reason to push into Greek territory for two years. Now he thinks he’s got one, so he took it straight to Lorenzo instead of the floor. For once, he’s not being hot-headed about it. He’s building his case before anyone else gets to speak.

Declan will back him, but not because he trusts him. He’s been quiet since his cousin’s kid turned up dead with that symbol carved above him. He wants revenge, and with two dead bodies, same mark, and shell trace pointing into Adrianos’s network, the target is drawing itself.

Lorenzo’s calling the meeting because he sees the alliance fracturing and wants to plug the hole before it blows. It’s the right call. He always makes the right call. The problem is plugging the hole requires something solid, and what I’ve got is a code of two letters and a number, and a dead man’s files that point somewhere inside that council room without giving me an actual name.

Somewhere in this city, OB6 received the same news I just got, thinking they’ve still got time. They think nobody’s close enough to matter yet.

They’re wrong.

“Adrianos know yet?” I ask.

“Lorenzo called him first,” Marka says. “Courtesy, before Santiago could get there.”

At least Adrianos walks in knowing what’s coming instead of finding out when Santiago opens his mouth in a room full of armed men.

26

Evelina

“You’re coming,” Volkov observes, his brow raised.

“Yes,” I say. “I am.”

I’m already dressed. I’ve been dressed for twenty minutes, standing at the window with my coffee while he moves through the room, taking his jacket, weapon, and phone. Four hours of sleep and twelve weeks of unfinished business, and he still does it in that order every time.

He looks at me for a second, reads my face, then nods and walks out. I take that as my invitation to follow.