POV: Aria
Nobody sent it. That was what I told him.
I put the phone away and looked at Matteo and said nobody sent it, wrong number, and he watched me say it with the expression of a man who knew what a lie looked like because he'd been on both sides of enough of them to recognise the shape.
He didn't push. That was what got me. He looked at me for three full seconds and then he let it go, and I didn't know if that meant he believed me or if it meant he was keeping the question for later, and either way I couldn't deal with it right then because Dez was still across the level with two armed men and the five minutes were running.
"I need to see him," I said.
Matteo turned and said something to one of his men. Thirty seconds later Dez was walking back toward me. Same walk. Same face. Nothing missing. He stopped beside me and didn't speak and I didn't speak and the two of us just stood there for a second the way you did after something almost happened and didn't.
"Good," I said, to Matteo.
"Now you," he said.
I knew what he meant. He meant the deal. He meant the answer I'd been working up to since that conversation started, the answer that I already knew and had already made and had been dragging my heels on because saying it out loud turned it into a real thing I couldn't take back.
I looked at Dez once more. He looked at the ground, which was his way of saying he already knew what I was going to say and was giving me space to say it without his face making it harder.
"My crew works for you," I said. "Transport, extraction, delivery. On the terms I set out. The girl gets safe placement and the chain gets traced back. You keep your men off my people when we're not on a job. And nobody outside this circle knows we're connected."
Matteo was quiet.
"If any of those break," I said, "we're done. Whatever that costs."
He considered me. Took his time with it. "You negotiate like someone who has options."
"I negotiate like someone who knows what she's worth," I said. "Which is the same thing from where I'm standing."
Something moved at the corner of his mouth. Not quite a smile. The suggestion of one, small and controlled, there and then gone before it fully arrived. I noticed it the way you noticed a sound in a quiet room. Against my better judgment I found myself wondering what it looked like when it went all the way.
I didn't follow that thought. I closed a door on it.
"Agreed," he said.
He said it simply, no ceremony, like we'd just settled something ordinary, and maybe for him it was ordinary, maybe that was just another Tuesday, but my chest was doing something that had nothing to do with relief. I had made a choice. It was done. And the person I made it to was standing close enough that I could see the exact moment he stopped reading me and started thinking about whatever came next.
"Tonight," he said.
"What."
"The first delivery. Tonight." He looked at his watch, then at me. "You'll have the route by nine. Three stops. Low risk, standard cargo. Consider it an introduction."
"To what."
"To how this works."
I wanted to ask what standard cargo meant in the DeLuca context, but I didn't, because asking told him the question scared me and I needed more time before he knew what scared me. I filed it instead. I'd been filing things all night and the stack was getting heavy. At some point I was going to have to open those files and actually look at what was in them.
Dez touched my elbow. Once. Light. Our signal for later, which meant he had something to say that wasn't for that audience and I needed to make space for it.
"We need two hours," I said to Matteo. "Crew briefing."
"One," he said.
"Two," I said. "Unless you want us running your delivery half-informed and on no sleep, in which case one is fine."
That corner of his mouth again. "Two hours," he said.
His men moved first, back to the vehicles, unhurried and organised. He stood where he was while they moved around him and watched me for a moment that lasted a beat longer than it needed to.
"The message," he said. Just that. Not a question, not a demand. He said it and then he turned and walked toward the last remaining car and got in and the door closed and they were gone and the parking level was suddenly very empty.
I stood in the quiet for maybe five seconds before Mika was beside me.
"Tell me you got something out of that," he said.
"We're alive," I said.
"That's the starting point, Aria. Not the prize."
He wasn't wrong. I didn't tell him that.
Dez pulled me aside from Mika and kept his voice low. "The text."
"I saw it."
"Unknown number. Someone who knew what was happening in real time." He paused. "Someone who was watching."
"Or someone already inside the communication line," I said.
He looked at me. "Rael's side."
"Maybe. Or someone watching Rael. Or someone watching Matteo." I stopped. "Or someone watching us."
The possibilities didn't get more comfortable the more I turned them over. Someone had sent four words at the exact moment they would do the most damage, and then gone silent, and I had no thread to pull on and no way to know whether that message was a warning, a test, or something designed to put a crack between me and Matteo before the first job even started.
Maybe all three.
My phone was in my hand before I decided to pick it up. I went back to the message. Read it again.
He doesn't own you.
I typed one word back.
Who.
The response came in eleven seconds, which was fast enough to tell me whoever it was had been waiting.
Someone who needs you to stay close to him. Don't run. Don't fight. Just drive. And when the third stop tonight asks you to open the trunk, don't.
I read it twice, then three times, and the parking structure felt very still and very large, and Dez was watching my face and I knew what he saw there because I could feel it.
"What," he said.
I showed him the phone and waited.