Norah doesn't sleep.
She lies on the bed in the room Dante prepared and stares at the ceiling, watching dawn light creep across the unfamiliar space. Her body is exhausted, but her mind won't shut off.
Three weeks.
The number loops through her thoughts like a mantra. Twenty-one days to figure out how to escape a debt she didn't know existed until twelve hours ago.
She should be terrified.
She is terrified.
But underneath the terror, there's something else. Anger, maybe. Or defiance. Because she's spent her whole life cleaning up her father's messes—his debts, his reputation, his sins—and now she's supposed to die for them too?
No.
Not acceptable.
Norah sits up. Her reflection in the mirror across the room looks like a stranger—dark circles under her eyes, hair a mess, still wearing the scrubs she put on yesterday morning in a different life. She needs a shower. Needs to think clearly.
The bathroom is nicer than her entire apartment in Baltimore. Marble counters, a clawfoot tub, one of those rainfall showerheads that probably costs more than her monthly rent. Everything smells new. Unused.
How many women has Dante brought here? she wonders as she strips off her scrubs. How many have stood in this exact spot, preparing for three weeks of borrowed time?
The shower is scalding. She stands under it until her skin turns pink, until some of the tension in her shoulders loosens. By the time she steps out, wrapping herself in a towel that's softer than anything she owns, she's made a decision.
She's not going to be a passive victim in this.
If she has three weeks, she'll use them. Figure out who these people are, what they really want, and how to give them something other than her life.
The closet is full of clothes in her exact size. Jeans, t-shirts, sweaters. Simple stuff, but good quality. Someone knew her measurements. Someone's been watching her long enough to know what she wears.
The thought makes her skin crawl.
She picks jeans and a gray sweater, finds socks and underwear still in packages. Everything fits perfectly, which is somehow worse than if it didn't.
When she emerges from the bedroom, Dante's on the couch with a laptop. He looks up when he hears her, and something flashes across his face. Relief, maybe.
"Coffee?" he offers.
"Please."
He pours her a cup, adds cream without asking. Which means he knows how she takes her coffee. Which means he's been watching her longer than she thought.
"How do you know I take cream?" Norah asks, accepting the mug.
Dante hesitates. "Surveillance photos. You were photographed at Starbucks fourteen times over the past three months. Always ordered a medium coffee with cream, no sugar."
"That's creepy."
"Yes." He doesn't deny it. "It is."
Norah sips her coffee. It's good. Too good. Everything in this apartment is too nice, too comfortable. Like a cage designed to make you forget you're trapped.
"I need to know everything," she says. "About my father, the Calabrias, the debt. All of it. No more vague answers."
Dante closes his laptop. "Okay. What do you want to know?"
"Start with my father. You said he worked for them for twenty years. Doing what?"
"Shipping logistics. Import-export. Your father was good with numbers, better with people. He knew how to move cargo through ports without attracting attention. Made the Calabrias millions."
"Illegal cargo."
"Sometimes." Dante's voice is neutral. "Drugs, mostly. Some weapons. Occasionally people."
Norah's stomach turns. "People."
"Trafficking victims. Usually women being brought in from Eastern Europe or South America. Your father didn't handle the... product. Just the logistics. Made sure containers weren't inspected, paperwork looked clean, that sort of thing."
"And my mother?" Norah's voice cracks. "Did she know?"
"I don't know. Maybe. Maybe not. Your father was good at compartmentalizing."
Norah sets her coffee down before she drops it. Her hands are shaking. "So my entire childhood was funded by trafficking money. Everything we had—the house, my private school, my college tuition—all of it came from—"
"Yes." Dante's voice is gentle, which somehow makes it worse.
She stands abruptly, pacing to the window. Don't go near the windows, Dante said. She doesn't care.
Outside, the French Quarter is waking up. People walking dogs. Opening shops. Living normal lives that don't involve discovering their dead father was complicit in human trafficking.
"Why didn't you tell me this last night?" She doesn't turn around.
"Because you'd just had your life upended. I thought you needed time before—"
"Before what? Before learning my father was a monster?" Norah's laugh is bitter. "I already knew he was a thief. This is just... more thorough."
Dante says nothing.
"Tell me about the murder," Norah says. "The one he witnessed."
"Vincent Calabria—the nephew, not the uncle—was eighteen years old. Smart kid. Too smart, according to his family. Started asking questions about where the money really came from, whether they should be in the trafficking business. Became a liability."
"So his uncle killed him."
"Shot him on the docks where your father worked. Vincent—the uncle—claimed it was a rival family. Staged it to look like a hit. But your father was there. Saw the whole thing. And instead of keeping quiet, he kept evidence."
"Why?"
"Insurance. Your father knew that if the family ever turned on him, he'd need leverage. So he kept the security footage, financial records proving Vincent's alibi was fake, everything. Stored it on a USB drive that he hid somewhere before he died."
"And the Calabrias think I know where it is."
"Yes."
Norah finally turns from the window. "But I don't. I've never seen a USB drive. Never heard my father mention evidence or murder or any of this."
"I know." Dante's expression is hard to read. "They don't care. As far as they're concerned, you're the only living connection to your father. Which makes you either a source of information or a loose end that needs tying up."
"So they want me dead either way."
"Yes."
The word is simple. Final.
Norah walks back to the couch, sits down heavily. "Then why the three-week timeline? Why not just kill me and be done with it?"
"Because the Calabrias have rules. Protocol. When someone owes a blood debt, there's a process. First, they collect the debtor—that's you. Then they hold them for three weeks, giving them time to settle the debt if they can."
"But I can't settle it. I don't have what they want."
"Which is why, after three weeks, the debt is considered forfeit. And the penalty is death."
"That's insane."
"That's tradition." Dante leans forward, elbows on his knees. "These families—the Calabrias, the Volkovs, the Castellanos—they all operate on centuries-old rules. Blood for blood. Debt for debt. It's not rational. It's ritualistic."
Norah drops her head into her hands. "So what do we do? Where do we even start?"
"We find the USB drive."
She looks up. "But I don't know where it is. I just said—"
"Your father had to hide it somewhere he thought was safe. Somewhere you could access if you needed to. Think. Did he leave anything for you when he died? A safety deposit box? A storage unit? Anything?"
"No. His estate was seized by the feds. Everything went to pay legal fees and restitution. I got nothing except his watch and his wedding ring."
"Where are those now?"
"The ring's in my apartment. The watch—" Norah stops. "I sold it. Six months after he died. I needed money for my mother's nursing home."
"Who'd you sell it to?"
"A pawn shop in Fells Point. Why?"
Dante's already opening his laptop again, fingers flying over the keys. "Because if your father hid something in that watch, whoever bought it might have found it."
"You think he hid a USB drive in a watch?"
"I think he was smart enough to hide it somewhere you'd never think to look. And a watch is—" He stops, staring at the screen. "What was your father's wedding anniversary?"
"November seventh. Why?"
"And your mother's birthday?"
"August twelfth."
Dante types rapidly. His expression shifts. "Son of a bitch."
"What? What did you find?"
He turns the laptop toward her. The screen shows a bank website. A login page.
"Your father opened an offshore account two months before he died," Dante says. "The password hint is 'her special days.'"
Norah's heart is pounding. "You think the USB drive information is in there?"
"I think it's worth trying." He slides the laptop to her. "November seventh and August twelfth. Try different combinations."
Her fingers shake as she types. 1107. Wrong password. 0812. Wrong. 11070812. Wrong.
"Try it backwards," Dante suggests.
1208. Wrong. 1107. Already tried. 12081107.
The screen changes.
Access granted.
"Oh my God." Norah stares at the account balance. $847,000. "He had almost a million dollars hidden."
"Look for documents. Files. Anything attached to the account."
She navigates through the interface, finds a section labeled "Secure Storage." Inside: three files. All encrypted.
"I can't open them," she says. "They need a password."
"Try the same combinations."
11070812. Wrong.
12081107. Wrong.
"Shit." Norah sits back. "What else would he use?"
"Your birthday?" Dante suggests.
"March third." She types 0303. Wrong. 030319—her birth year. Wrong.
"Your sister's birthday?"
Emma. The thought of her father using Emma's birthday as a password makes Norah's throat tight. "June twenty-first."
0621. Wrong.
06211999. Wrong.
"Wait." A memory surfaces. "My sister's middle name was Rose. My father always called her his 'summer rose' because she was born in June."
"Try rose," Dante says.
Rose. Wrong.
Summer. Wrong.
SummerRose. Wrong.
"Damn it!" Norah wants to throw the laptop across the room.
Dante's silent for a moment. Then: "Try it in Italian. Your father spent twenty years working with Italian families. Maybe—"
"Rosa." Norah types it. Wrong.
"Summer in Italian is estate," Dante says.
EstateRosa. Wrong.
"Backwards?"
RosaEstate.
The files open.
Norah's breath catches. Three documents, all PDFs. The first is security camera footage—stills, dozens of them, showing Vincent Calabria shooting a young man on a dock. The timestamp shows the date. The angle shows everything.
The second file is financial records. Wire transfers, offshore accounts, money moving in patterns that spell out guilt in black and white.
The third file is a typed confession. Her father's words, detailing everything he witnessed. Everything he knew. Signed and dated.
"This is it," Norah whispers. "This is what they want."