There's a special kind of hell reserved for a sister who has to watch her own blood sell her out on a grainy video feed. The image of Jordan sitting across from Dante's man was burned into the back of my eyelids. Every time I blinked, I saw it. The weak set of his jaw, the desperate hunger in his eyes. He wasn't just looking for a seat at a table; he was trying to build his own, using the splinters of mine.
I couldn't touch Jordan. Not yet. Touching him would be like trying to hold fire—I'd just end up burning myself. The hurt was too deep, the betrayal too raw. So I did what any queen does when her castle is under siege from within. I found the closest snake, the one I could reach, and I prepared to cut its head off.
Rico.
My office was dark, the only light coming from the three monitors on my desk, their blue glow painting my face in shades of ice. I'd spent twelve hours straight digging. Not into Rico, but into the systems I'd built to protect myself. A fortress is only as strong as its weakest stone, and I was looking for the cracks.
The discrepancy in the counting room was small. Almost negligible. The kind of error a less paranoid woman would write off as a rounding mistake. But I ain't that woman. I'm the kind of woman who knows that a single drop of poison can taint the whole well.
I picked up the phone and dialed my accountant, a nervous man named Arthur who worked from a remote server in a city I'd never told him the name of. He was loyal because he was terrified. The best kind of loyalty there is.
"Arthur," I said, my voice flat. "I need you to cook me a ghost."
"A… a ghost, Ms. Vega?" he stammered.
"A ghost ledger. I want you to create a new file, accessible only by the primary server in the 14th street salon. Call the file 'Sunshine Imports.' Make it look like a new supplier deal out of Miami. I want the numbers to be big. A ten-million-dollar cash transfer. Off the books. Untraceable."
"Ms. Vega, a transaction that large with no paper trail… it's—"
"It's bait, Arthur. And I know the snake is hungry. Just build the cage. I'll handle the rest."
I hung up before he could argue. He'd do it. Because the only thing Arthur feared more than the IRS was me.
I leaned back in my chair, the leather sighing under my weight. This was the part of the game I hated and loved in equal measure. The quiet calculation. The moving of pieces no one else could see. It was lonely work, being the architect of your own survival.
An hour later, Arthur sent a confirmation. The ghost ledger was live. A beautiful, tempting piece of fiction sitting on a server that only five people had access to. One of them was Rico.
Now for the performance.
I waited until I knew Rico was in the counting room next door, finishing up the day's tallies. The walls were thick, but not that thick. I could practically feel his anxiety seeping through the drywall, a low, buzzing hum of fear. He knew he was being watched. He just didn't know by who.
I picked up my burner phone and dialed Bishop. He answered on the first ring, silent. He knew the protocol.
I put him on speaker and pitched my voice just loud enough to bleed through the walls. I made it sound casual, a little tired. Like a boss wrapping up a long day.
"Yeah, B, it's me," I said, swirling the ice in my glass of water. "The Miami deal is a go. Sunshine Imports. They're solid."
I paused, listening. All I could hear was the faint, rhythmic *thump-thump* of the cash counter next door. It stopped.
He was listening.
"The transfer's happening tonight," I continued, my voice a masterclass in casual deception. "The armored truck is leaving the midtown depot at midnight. Route seven. It's a straight shot down the FDR. We need it to be smooth. No cowboys, you hear me? This is five mil in clean cash. It's the down payment for the new product. We can't afford any mistakes."
I took a long, slow sip of my water. I could feel Rico's ears pressed against the wall. I could feel his heart hammering in his chest, a frantic bird trapped in a cage of ribs. He was probably sweating, wondering if this was his chance. Wondering if the people pulling his strings would see this as the big score they needed.
"No, no one else knows," I said, answering an imaginary question from Bishop. "Just you, me, and the counting team. I'm keeping the circle tight on this one. Too many ears these days."
I hung up.
The silence that followed was absolute. For a full minute, there was nothing. Then, the cash counter started up again, faster this time. Frantic. He was rushing to finish his work. Rushing to make his call.
I turned down the lights in my office, leaving just the glow of the monitors. I sat there in the dark, a ghost in my own machine, and I waited.
The waiting is the hardest part. It's when the other voices creep in. The voice that sounds like Maya, asking me what I've become. The voice that sounds like Jordan, accusing me of not trusting him. The voice that sounds like my mother, telling me I was meant for better things than this.
A queen can't afford to bleed, but that don't mean she ain't got veins. The betrayals of the past few days had left me with a thousand tiny cuts. And Rico? He was just the salt I was about to pour in them. I felt a pang of something that might have been pity. He was a pawn, a small man caught in a big game. Someone had found his weakness—his sick mother, his daughter's tuition, a debt—and they'd squeezed. Hard.
But pity doesn't stop a bullet. Pity doesn't keep your people safe. Pity is a weakness, and I had just told my brother that weakness gets you killed.
I went home to my penthouse. I didn't eat. I didn't sleep. I just sat on my couch, a glass of whiskey in my hand, my laptop open on the coffee table. The screen showed a live feed of the server's access log. A string of code, updating every few seconds. Normal activity.
The hours ticked by. Ten o'clock. Eleven. The city outside was a galaxy of glittering lights, each one a story, a life, a secret. My world had shrunk to the size of this screen.
I thought about Stone. About his warning. *A queen with no one to trust is just a target.* He was right. But a queen with no one to trust is also a queen with nothing to lose. And that made me the most dangerous woman in this whole damn city.
My shift was supposed to be over. Rico's shift ended at six. If he was going to make a move, he'd do it from home. From a place he thought was safe.
At 11:47 PM, it happened.
A new line of code appeared on the screen. A security alert.
*REMOTE ACCESS GRANTED: USER_ID_774. RICO.M.*
My breath hitched. My fingers froze over the keyboard.
Another line popped up.
*FILE ACCESSED: Sunshine_Imports_Ledger.pdf*
I watched, my heart a cold, steady drum against my ribs. There was no joy in this. No triumph. Just the grim, hollow satisfaction of being right. The feeling of a surgeon who's just confirmed a diagnosis. The tumor was real. And now, it had to be cut out.
*DOWNLOAD INITIALIZED.*
He was taking it. He was taking the bait and running with it, straight to his handlers. He was signing his own death warrant.
*DOWNLOAD COMPLETE.*
*REMOTE ACCESS TERMINATED.*
The screen went back to normal. But nothing was normal anymore. The betrayal was no longer a suspicion. It was a timestamped, data-logged fact.
I closed the laptop. The quiet of the penthouse was a tomb. The trap had been set. The bait had been taken.
The snake was in the cage.
***
I stood up and walked to the window, looking down at the river, a dark, endless ribbon of black. My expression was calm, devoid of all emotion. I picked up my phone and dialed Bishop.
He answered, his voice a low rumble in the darkness. "Reina."
"He took it," I said, my voice as cold and quiet as the grave. "The trap has been sprung."
A beat of silence. Then, "What are your orders?"
I watched a lone barge move slowly down the river, its lights a pinprick in the vast darkness.
"Tonight," I whispered, "we go hunting."