POV: Aria
We moved Dez first.
Matteo made a call and twenty minutes later Dez was in a car heading somewhere I didn't have an address for and I had to sit with that, the not knowing, while Matteo made two more calls and I stood at the window and tried to map who was watching from where.
Mika was already out of reach. Sofia I couldn't contact without my phone. Matteo said his people were watching them both and I said that was not the same as safe and he said no it wasn't, and at least that was honest.
When the calls were done he sat in the chair behind the desk and looked at me and I looked at the wall and we were in the middle of a problem with a four-day deadline and three days of preparation required and neither of us was saying the thing that was actually on the table.
"Carver's people will ask about your history," he said finally.
"I know."
"The version we give them needs to be specific enough to survive a check."
"I know that too," I said.
"Which means I need to know your actual history," he said. "The parts Victor's people might find."
I turned from the window.
He was watching me with the patient look he used when he had decided to wait for something. I had learned in the last twenty-four hours that that look meant he had already made a decision and was allowing me time to arrive at it myself, which was either respect or a refined form of control.
"I grew up in the Bronx," I said. "Moved eight times before fifteen. My father ran deliveries for people who didn't ask questions. I learned to drive at eleven because he needed someone without a record. By seventeen I was better than him. By nineteen he was out of the picture and I was running my own jobs." I paused. "That's what Victor's people will find."
"The version," he said.
"Yes."
"What's the other version."
I looked at the wall. "There isn't one."
He said nothing. That nothing had weight to it.
"What," I said.
"You said by nineteen your father was out of the picture," he said. "You didn't say where he went."
I turned back to the window. Outside, a black car I didn't recognise was parked on the far side of the street. It had been there when I arrived and I had been deciding for an hour whether it belonged to Victor's people or Matteo's.
"That's not relevant to Carver's background check," I said.
"It might be. Depending on how he went."
"He left," I said. "People leave."
Matteo was quiet for a moment. Then: "Victor will have people who specialise in finding the gaps in a story. The things people don't say. If there's a gap in yours they'll find it and pull on it."
"Then we fill it with something clean," I said.
"What kind of something."
"Car accident," I said. "Three years after I started running solo. He was driving, I wasn't there, he didn't make it. Clean record, no investigation, nobody to contradict it."
Matteo looked at me for a long moment. "That's very specific for something you just invented."
I didn't answer that.
He stood up. Walked around the desk, not toward me, just changing positions the way people did when processing something. He stopped at the wall and looked at my photograph and I watched him and thought about someone taking that picture from a distance.
"You've been doing this since you were eleven," he said.
"Driving."
"Running," he said. "Moving things quietly for people who needed it. Since before most people decide what they want."
I didn't answer.
"And you built something," he said. "A crew. People who stay. That's not small in this kind of work."
I looked at the floor. I was not accustomed to someone describing what I did in terms of cost rather than output, and not knowing what to do with it was itself information I didn't want to give him.
"The crew is the job right now," I said. "Keeping them out of Victor's line of sight for the next four days."
"Yes," he said.
"After that there's a conversation about what this operation costs them long term. But right now the job is the four days."
"Yes," he said again.
He was still standing at the wall. Far enough that when he turned and faced me the space between us was different from how it had been since we walked in there together.
He turned and faced me.
I held his eyes.
"There's something you need to understand about tonight," he said, "before you walk into Carver's meeting and become someone Victor Moretti is watching."
"Tell me," I said.
"Once you're in that room you're in it. There is no version of tonight where you go in and decide it's too much and walk back out. Carver will read a departure as confirmation you're still connected to me, and if he thinks that, he reports to Victor, and if Victor thinks that, your crew doesn't matter anymore because you do."
"I understand that," I said.
"I need to be sure you understand it completely," he said, and he took one step toward me.
Just one. Unhurried. The space between us closed from professional to something that didn't have a professional name and he stopped there and looked at me and everything about him was still.
"Because the version of this where something goes wrong tonight," he said quietly, "is the version I've spent eight months making sure does not happen to you."
The room was very quiet.
I was very aware of the distance left between us.
"You've been building a case," I said. My voice came out even.
"Yes," he said. And then: "Among other things."
I looked at him. He looked at me.
My hand moved before I decided to move it, a small shift toward the wall, and his eyes went to it and came back to my face and neither of us moved and the thing happening in that room was the thing I had been not looking at since the parking structure and I was out of ways to avoid it.
The door opened.
Luca stood in the frame. He looked at the two of us and his face did something small and careful.
"Carver moved the meeting," he said. "It's in two hours."