The file on Selene Morra was twenty-two pages long.
Luca had read it fourteen times.
He knew this because he'd started writing the dates in the margin somewhere around the fifth read, when he'd stopped pretending it was professional curiosity and started admitting it was something else entirely. The first date was nine months ago. The most recent was this morning — 4 a.m., kitchen table, the kind of Varenthia darkness that pressed against the windows like it had somewhere to be.
He closed the file now and looked at Captain Reyes.
She had the careful expression she reserved for assignments she expected to go sideways. Luca had learned to read it the way sailors read weather.
"The position opened three weeks ago," she said, turning to the board. Center photograph: Selene Morra leaving her headquarters on Varen Street, flanked by two men built like architecture. "Her head of personal security turned up dead in the harbor. Ruled accidental." Reyes let the word accidental sit there long enough to curdle. "She needs a replacement. That's our way in."
Luca looked at the photograph.
Twenty-six. That was still the thing that got him — twenty-six years old and she'd inherited an empire that had swallowed three federal investigations whole and spat the bones into the harbor. He'd been twenty-six once. He'd been eating bad takeout in a studio apartment and failing to file his expense reports on time.
Selene Morra at twenty-six ran Varenthia's most untouchable criminal organization with the kind of quiet authority that made men twice her age step aside without being asked.
"Your background holds," Reyes continued. "Eight years private security, documented and clean. We've already seeded your name into the right circles. Someone she trusts will recommend you." A pause. "You check in every forty-eight hours. You take nothing that isn't offered. You go off-script and I pull you out personally." Her eyes found his. "This isn't about your history with this case, Voss. Say it back to me."
"It's not about my history with this case."
She looked at him the way people looked at men they believed were lying but couldn't yet prove it.
Then she moved on.
***
The attack happened before any of it was supposed to begin.
Luca was in the Old Quarter for a meeting with Sorrel — a contact who ran in orbits adjacent to the Morra family's outer edges — when Selene Morra walked into the same restaurant at eight forty-three like the night had simply decided to accelerate.
She came in with two of her men and was shown to the private room at the back without a word exchanged, which meant she came here often enough that words were unnecessary. Luca kept his eyes on his plate. He was nobody tonight. A security consultant named Marco Vane, eating alone, unremarkable in every direction.
He'd almost convinced himself.
Then the windows came in.
Violence was always faster than memory made it. Glass, shouting, the specific crack of furniture hitting marble that meant things had moved beyond the recoverable. Luca was on his feet before the decision had finished forming.
The corridor to the private room: one of her men down and bleeding, the other losing badly to two attackers who moved like they'd done this before. Selene was on her feet behind an overturned table she'd moved herself, a knife in her hand that had definitely not come from the restaurant, watching the room with eyes that were absolutely, almost unnervingly calm.
The third attacker came from behind Luca.
He handled it. Not gracefully — there was nothing graceful about it — but efficiently, the way eight years of private security had built into his hands before the badge ever did. The man went down. Luca turned just in time to see the second attacker break free and move toward her.
He crossed the room.
He took a hit to the ribs that cracked something. He finished it anyway.
When he straightened up and turned around, breathing harder than he'd have liked, she was three feet away.
Still holding the knife. Still calm. Looking at him the way he imagined she looked at everything — like she was already three moves ahead and was simply waiting to see if he'd bother to catch up. Up close she was younger than every photograph had prepared him for and considerably more dangerous. Nothing in her face said thank you. Nothing said relief. What it said was: I am already figuring out what you are.
Her eyes moved over him once. Unhurried. Methodical.
"You're not a customer," she said. Low voice. Certain.
"No."
"Not with them either."
"No."
Outside, sirens were beginning their slow approach. Behind him her remaining guard was getting to his feet, glassshards grinding under his boots. The restaurant had emptied itself of everyone with the good sense to leave.
Selene Morra looked at him for a long moment with an expression that gave away nothing at all.
"Who are you?"
Luca looked her in the eye and told her the first of what would become many lies.
"Someone who can keep you alive," he said. "If you'll let me."
She said nothing.