POV Mara
Adrian held Bellandi's stare without a single tell, and the steadiness of it made something twist in my chest—not admiration, I wouldn't allow that, but recognition of a predator who'd learned to wear sheep's clothing so well he'd forgotten it was costume.
"I've stepped back from the blunt-force work," Adrian said, voice carrying that specific boredom of truth. "Only filled in on one interrogation recently, and apparently I've forgotten how to be properly scary." He gestured vaguely at his bruised face. "Given the state of things."
The lie slid out smooth as aged whiskey, and I cataloged how his shoulders never tensed, how his breathing stayed even. This wasn't performance—this was nature, and the ease of it should have terrified me more than it fascinated me.
"Interesting," Bellandi said, already bored with the pretense. His gaze shifted, sharpened. "I'm surprised you still work for Mare Nero, Ricci. They've had two years to find who orchestrated that shootout, and yet..." He spread his hands, theatrical sympathy that fooled no one. "Your girlfriend's killer still breathes somewhere, doesn't he? Such a convenient crossfire, such a perfect accident."
A muscle jumped along Adrian's jaw—barely there, but I caught it like I caught everything about him now, cataloging weaknesses and wanting in equal measure. My parents' bodies still lay between us, too fresh for me to feel anything but cold satisfaction at his pain.
"I keep telling you," Bellandi continued, voice dropping into something almost playful, "come work for me. I have something. Information about that unfortunate morning. But you keep refusing, like loyalty to ghosts matters more than truth."
His quiet laugh scraped against my nerves. "Work for me, Adrian. Then we talk about who really killed her."
A waiter materialized with a tray of amber poison. Every man reached except Adrian—until Bellandi's attention made refusal impossible.
I shifted forward, ready to decline on his behalf, but Bellandi's eyes snapped to mine with the precision of a blade finding flesh.
"Did someone give you permission to move?" The question was soft, almost gentle, and infinitely more terrifying for it.
I froze. Adrian took the whiskey, killed it in two swallows that made his throat work in a way I couldn't stop watching, then held out the glass. "Another."
The nerve had been struck, played like a violin string pulled too tight. He leaned forward, and his voice dropped into that register men use when collecting old debts.
"That fire in '22," Adrian said, each word deliberate. "The warehouse on Pier 47. You walked out because I walked in. That has to be worth something."
The table breathed around us—chips clattering, cards whispering, someone raking a pot with the mechanical precision of habit. Bellandi let the silence stretch until it hummed with possibility.
"Look among your own," he said finally, the words falling like breadcrumbs in a dark forest. "That's all you get for free."
Heat lifted off Adrian like a mirage, but he caged it behind another swallow of whiskey—the second glass the waiter had brought, appearing at his elbow like summoned grief. The game resumed, quiet and edged with something that tasted like blood in the air.
I needed more—more information, more angles, more weapons to wield when everything inevitably went to hell. My hand found Adrian's shoulder, a touch that looked like possession but meant escape.
"I need to step away," I murmured, letting my voice carry just enough suggestion to make it unremarkable.
Adrian's fingers grazed mine—permission and warning tangled together—and I drifted from the table like smoke, letting a floor host gesture vaguely toward the restrooms.
The perimeter called to me, and I answered, moving like any decoration given legs—a palm trailing across a chair back here, a nod to a passing woman there.
But their smiles turned brittle the moment I passed, like flowers freezing mid-bloom, and I understood what I was to them: temporary, disposable, forgotten after I left.
The ladies' room door stood ajar, voices spilling out like perfume mixed with arsenic. I paused, letting their words paint a picture I already knew.
"—most eligible bachelor since the tragedy, and he shows up with that?" A laugh like breaking glass. "She looks exactly like one."
"A prostitute?" Another voice, younger, hungry for scandal. "God, you're right. That dress, that way she moves. He probably pulled her straight from—"
"The prettiest ones always come with a price tag," the first voice concluded. "Though you'd think Adrian would have better taste. Or at least better discretion."
The insult slid off me like rain on glass—I'd been called worse by better—but the risk made my pulse quicken.
These women would remember me now, would whisper about Adrian's whore at every gathering, would create a trail of gossip that could lead back to two bodies on a kitchen floor.
The men's room door swung open, and my blood turned to battery acid.
The Tribeca dealer stumbled out, wiping powder from his nose with the back of his hand, eyes bright with chemical confidence. The same dealer whose face I'd decorated with my knuckles, whose Patek Philippe was probably still rotting in some trash can.
He hadn't seen me yet, too busy checking his reflection in the hallway's gilded mirror, but when he turned—when those coked-out eyes found mine—the neat fiction of my anonymity would shred like tissue paper in rain.
The fantasy consumed me before logic could intervene—my arm sliding under his chin from behind, dragging him backward into the men's room while his designer shoes scraped for purchase.
The door would bang shut on his surprised gasp. My forearm would seal his windpipe while my free hand found a zip tie. Security cameras would catch us entering but not what happened in the stall where I'd make him understand exactly who owned this moment, this breath, this—
One heartbeat. Two. I stood frozen. The dealer's hand moved to smooth his collar.
Three heartbeats. Four. But he still didn't see me.