Chapter 4 - THE MAN NICO TRUSTED LIKE A BROTHER
Arthur moved me before sunset.
Not back to the penthouse.
I made that condition very clear.
“If Nico is there, I’m leaving.”
“He won’t be.”
“You expect me to believe that?”
“No,” Arthur said. “I expect you to verify it yourself.”
The safe location was an apartment above a closed bookstore in Brooklyn.
Ugly couch.
Old radiators.
No marble.
No staff.
No cameras in the bedroom.
Perfect.
Arthur arrived alone.
I kept the flash drive in my pocket.
He didn’t ask for it.
That earned him exactly one inch of trust.
“Tell me about Vincent.”
Arthur sat across from me.
Vincent DeLuca was Nico’s cousin through Nico’s father.
They had grown up together.
After Nico’s father was killed, Vincent’s family helped keep the organization from splitting apart.
Nico trusted him with accounting, shipping schedules, offshore holdings, and access codes.
“Basically everything.”
“Everything except you,” Arthur said.
I stared at him.
“Don’t romanticize this.”
“I’m not.”
Good.
Because I wasn’t ready to hear that Nico secretly loved me while remembering how rarely he had said it when I was standing right in front of him.
Arthur continued.
Three months earlier, Nico discovered money disappearing.
At first he suspected an outside crew.
Then someone tried to access private documents from the penthouse.
That was why Nico tightened security.
That was why meetings started happening at midnight.
That was why he had been sleeping three hours a night.
“And instead of telling me?”
“He thought ignorance protected you.”
“It didn’t.”
“No.”
Arthur looked genuinely ashamed.
Then he told me about the bug.
A listening device had been discovered inside a carved panel in Nico’s study two days earlier.
Nico deliberately left it active.
He wanted to feed Vincent false information.
Last night’s conversation had not been planned.
Arthur genuinely believed Nico was neglecting me.
He had confronted him spontaneously.
Nico realized the bug was listening.
So he turned me into bait without ever telling either of us.
“That sounds exactly like him.”
“Yes.”
Arthur rubbed his jaw.
“What you didn’t hear happened about twenty seconds after you walked away.”
My pulse changed.
“What happened?”
“Nico locked the study door.”
“And?”
“He told me there was a microphone in the wall.”
I swallowed.
Arthur continued.
“He said Vincent had started asking about you.”
I stared at him.
“Why?”
“Because Vincent believed you knew where Nico kept a second financial ledger.”
“I don’t.”
“We know.”
“Does Vincent?”
“No.”
That was why the flash drive had been hidden in my duffel.
Nico planned to move both me and the evidence to a secure property the next morning.
His brilliant plan depended on me remaining obediently asleep while men made decisions about my life.
It almost made me angrier than the insult.
Then Arthur showed me something from the flash drive I hadn’t opened.
A photograph.
Vincent entering Nico’s private office at 4:03 a.m.
Three months earlier.
I remembered that night.
I had been awake.
Nico was gone.
I had walked toward the kitchen for water and seen someone at the far end of the hallway.
A man.
I hadn’t seen his face clearly.
But I remembered one thing.
A silver ring.
Vincent always wore a silver signet ring.
Arthur looked at me.
“If you testify that you saw him there, it helps.”
“Testify to whom?”
Before he could answer, the apartment buzzer sounded.
Arthur’s hand immediately moved beneath his jacket.
Nobody was supposed to know where we were.
The buzzer sounded again.
Then a voice came through the old intercom.
“Mara.”
My entire body froze.
Nico.
Arthur looked at me.
“I did not tell him.”
The voice came again.
“Mara, I know you don’t want to see me.”
I walked toward the intercom but didn’t press the button.
May you like
Then Nico said something that frightened Arthur more than anything else had.
“Vincent knows this address too.”
