POV: Aria
The meeting happened. Victor was in the room. I did not fall apart.
That was the version I held onto on the drive back, the two-sentence summary that kept the rest at a manageable distance. The details I'd deal with later, when I wasn't in a car with a driver I didn't know and a city that might be watching the route.
Victor Moretti was shorter than I expected. That was the first thing. The second was that he watched me for forty minutes without speaking directly to me and I felt every second of it while I talked to Carver about routes and timelines and what I'd need to run the delivery clean. Victor asked one question at the end. Not about logistics. He asked how I ended up working for DeLuca in the first place.
I gave him the cover story.
He nodded once and looked at Carver and the meeting ended.
I had no idea if he believed me. That was what I couldn't sit with.
The driver dropped me at the building with the monitors and I went upstairs and Matteo was there and I told him everything in sequence, Victor's question, my answer, the nod, the ending. He listened without interrupting, and when I finished he said: "The nod is good. He nods when he's satisfied enough to proceed."
"That could mean anything."
"It means you're in," he said.
I sat down. The tension in my shoulders since I walked into that room hadn't fully released. "He had someone watching me. Not in the meeting. Outside. A man in a grey coat at the coffee place across the street when I arrived and still there when I left."
"We know," Matteo said. "He's been on you since the meeting ended."
"He's still on me."
"Yes."
I looked at the window.
"That was fast," I said.
"Victor doesn't wait to verify," he said. "He verifies while the conversation is still warm. If you'd done anything suspicious between the meeting and arriving here his people would already know."
"And if I do something suspicious now," I said, "they'll know that too."
"That's why we prepared the route," Matteo said. "You came here because this address is a logistics office used by three different companies, none of which connect back to me on paper. Victor's people will see a driver confirming paperwork for the upcoming job."
"You built in every move," I said.
"The ones I could predict," he said. "The ones I can't are why I need you careful."
That was a different kind of sentence than I'd heard from him before. Not the operational careful, but the other kind. I filed it and left it filed.
What I didn't file was the grey coat man, the watcher, who was by Matteo's own account still somewhere on my line of travel right then, noting times and locations and reporting in real time to a man who had asked me one question and nodded once and who I still couldn't read.
The next forty-eight hours were the preparation window. I had a job in two days. The watcher would be on me for every one of those hours and everything I did would be information laid out in front of Victor Moretti.
Which meant every move I made before the job was part of the performance. No time that wasn't being watched, no place that wasn't being mapped, no decision that wasn't data.
I had been watched before. That wasn't the thing.
The thing was I didn't know what the watcher was specifically looking for.
"What does Victor need to see from me before the job," I said.
"Reliability," Matteo said. "Routine. Someone who operates on a schedule and doesn't make unpredictable contact. A driver who moves cargo, not a person with her own agenda."
"And if he sees something else."
"Then Carver pulls the job and you become a loose end."
I looked at the table.
"Your crew," I said. "Are they contained enough that the watcher won't find them."
"Dez is secure. Mika is in position. Sofia" he stopped.
I looked at him.
"Sofia sent a message this morning through the secondary channel," he said. "She asked about the girl. The one from the crate."
"She's careful. She would have used a clean line."
"She used a clean line," he said. "But the message was routed through a relay Victor's people flagged six weeks ago. They didn't read it, but they logged the relay was active."
I was very still.
"Which means they know someone in my circle is communicating," I said. "They don't know who or what was said."
"Not yet," he said.
"But they're looking."
"Victor is always looking," Matteo said. "The question is what he finds and how fast."
I thought about Victor in that room. Forty minutes of watching. One question. One nod. A man who ran four parallel operations and had never been prosecuted, not because he was lucky but because he was systematic and patient and already three steps ahead before any variable knew it existed.
He was not looking because he doubted me. He was looking because he doubted everything, as a method, as the thing that had kept him operational for eleven years while everyone around him collapsed.
My phone buzzed. One of Matteo's secure lines. I picked it up.
A message from his contact inside Victor's operation. Three lines. I read them and read them again and the third time I looked up and Matteo was watching my face.
"He knows," I said.
"What does he know," Matteo said.
"He knows you trust me," I said. "His contact inside your operation told him this morning. Before the meeting. Before I walked in the room." I put the phone down. "Victor already knew I was yours when I sat down with Carver. The whole meeting was a test of whether I knew."
Matteo was very still.
"And now he's waiting," I said, "to see what I do with that information."
The watcher was still outside. I could feel it. The city going about its night and somewhere in it a man in a grey coat who had already sent everything to a person who had been several steps ahead since before the meeting started.
My next move was the job. And Victor already knew that too.