Matteo.
The office door slammed shut behind me, the sound echoing my fury. The wood shuddered in its frame.
“Lorenzo!”
My voice was a low roar. I didn't have to wait long. My second in command appeared in the doorway almost instantly, his expression calm, but his eyes wary. He knew this tone.
“Boss?”
“In here. Shut the door.”
He did as he was told, the click of the latch unnaturally loud in the tense silence. I walked to my desk but didn't sit. I felt caged, restless. I turned to face him.
“The girl,” I said, my voice clipped. “The intel you got on Isabella Soriano.”
“What about it?”
“It’s wrong.”
Lorenzo’s brow furrowed. “That’s impossible. My source is solid. We verified everything. The location, the description. It was her.”
“It wasn’t,” I snapped. “The woman upstairs claims her name is Nora Voss. She says she’s a nursing student.”
He scoffed, a rare show of disrespect that I let slide for now. “Of course she does. Soriano isn’t an idiot. He would have given her a cover story, trained her to be convincing.”
“She was convincing,” I said, my voice dangerously quiet. “She talked about student loans. Her father’s gambling debts. Waiting for a city bus in the rain.”
I paced behind the desk, running a hand over my jaw. Her face was seared into my mind. The terror in her eyes. The defiance.
“It sounded practiced?” Lorenzo asked.
“No,” I admitted, hating the word. “It sounded desperate. It sounded real.”
“Boss, it’s a trick. A way to get under your skin.”
“Bring me the dossier,” I commanded. “The complete file on Isabella Soriano. I want to see it again.”
Lorenzo nodded and left the room, returning a moment later with a thin manila folder. He placed it on the polished mahogany of my desk. I flipped it open.
The picture stared up at me. Isabella Soriano. Dark hair, olive skin. The same general look as the girl upstairs. But something was off. The picture was grainy, a surveillance shot.
“What color are her eyes?” I asked, not looking up.
Lorenzo didn’t have to check the file. He knew its contents. “Brown, Boss.”
“I know they’re brown. What shade of brown?”
“What shade?” he repeated, confused. “The file doesn’t specify a shade. It just says brown.”
“The girl in my guest room,” I said, my gaze fixed on the photograph. “Her eyes aren’t just brown. They’re the color of whiskey. Almost golden in the light.”
“It could be the lighting in the room. Or colored contacts. It’s a common disguise.”
I slammed the folder shut. “She mentioned a company. A debt collector. Vantage Financial.”
“A detail for her story.”
“Check it,” I ordered. “See if there’s any connection to a man named Marco Voss.”
Lorenzo moved to the small computer station in the corner of my office. The sound of his fingers flying across the keyboard was the only noise in the room.
I stared out the bulletproof window, at the dark, rain-soaked gardens. I thought of her scent when I was close to her. Not expensive perfume, but soap. Clean, simple soap.
“Anything?” I asked, my patience wearing thin.
“One moment… I’m running a search now.”
More typing. A few clicks of the mouse.
Then, silence.
“Lorenzo?”
He was quiet for a long time. When he finally spoke, his voice was tight. “I found him.”
I turned back to face him.
“Marco Voss,” Lorenzo said, reading from the screen. “Died eleven months ago. Heart failure. Left a mountain of debt. Mostly from gambling.”
My jaw tightened. “And Vantage Financial?”
“One of his loans was sold to them six months ago. They’ve been pursuing collection from the next of kin.”
Every muscle in my body went rigid. “Who is the next of kin?”
Lorenzo looked up from the screen, his face pale. “His daughter. Nora Voss.”
I closed my eyes. The pieces clicked into place with sickening certainty. The cheap coat. The exhausted look on her face. The raw, unfiltered panic. It wasn’t an act.
“We grabbed a civilian,” I said, the words like poison on my tongue.
“Boss, I don’t understand how this could have happened,” Lorenzo said, standing up. “The source was vetted. The intel was confirmed. I’ll find out who gave us the bad information. I’ll deal with them myself.”
“Oh, you will,” I promised, my voice dropping to an icy calm. “But first, we have a different problem.”
“What do we do with her?”
“We can’t keep her here. We let her go,” Lorenzo said immediately. “We’ll give her money. Enough to make her forget this ever happened. Drop her in a different state. She’ll be too terrified to ever say a word.”
“No.” The word was absolute.
“No?” Lorenzo looked shocked. “Boss, we can’t just… keep her. She’s innocent.”
“She was innocent,” I corrected him. “Now she’s a witness. She has seen this house. She has seen your face. She has seen my face.”
“She’s a scared student, not a threat.”
“Everyone is a threat,” I said sharply. “If we let her go, what happens? She tells a friend. Or she goes to the police. It’s a loose end we cannot afford. Especially not now.”
“So what is the other option?” Lorenzo asked, his voice low. He knew the other option. In our world, there was always another option.
I didn’t answer right away. I walked back to the desk and picked up the file again. I stared at Isabella Soriano’s face, but I saw Nora’s.
“She stays,” I said finally.
“Stays here? For how long?”
“Until this business with Soriano is finished,” I said. “Until he is no longer a problem.”
“She’ll never agree to that. She’ll fight you every step of the way.”
“Then she will learn not to fight,” I said. “It is better than the alternative. She’s not stupid. She will understand.”
“And what do we tell her?”
“The truth,” I said. “That we made a mistake. And now she is part of this, whether she likes it or not. For now, she is our guest.”
Lorenzo nodded, accepting the decision. My word was final.
“Find out everything there is to know about Nora Voss,” I ordered. “I want to know her blood type, her favorite color, every secret she has ever told. I want to know what makes her tick. Understand?”
“Yes, Boss. And the real Isabella?”
“Our objective hasn’t changed,” I said, my eyes hardening. “Find her. But be discreet. Our timeline has been moved up. Soriano will know something is wrong when his daughter doesn’t arrive.”
“I’ll get right on it.”
Lorenzo turned and left, closing the door softly behind him. I was alone with the silence and the file. A civilian. A complication I did not need. My men do not make mistakes.
I threw the folder across the room. It hit the wall and scattered its contents across the floor. My men had made a mistake. And now that mistake was sleeping in my house, in my bed, with whiskey colored eyes that had seen far too much.
