Chapter 3-Cage is lined with cashmere
867 Words
The room was not a cell.
This was Nora’s first, second, and third impression of it, because she had prepared herself, on the ride in the elevator with the silver-haired man called Carlo who moved with the particular grace of old wealth, to find something punitive. A locked room. A single bed. The performative austerity of a man who wanted her to understand her position.
What she found was a guest room that cost more per square foot than her entire apartment.
Floor-to-ceiling windows — here too, always the windows, the city displayed like an argument for everything Dominic Marchetti controlled. A bed that could have accommodated four people, dressed in linens the colour of heavy cream. A bathroom with a rainfall shower and products that were ostentatiously good. And on the desk in the corner: her laptop, her bag, and a French press with ground coffee in a sealed jar beside it, all of which had been retrieved from her office while she sat across from Dominic discussing Index’s dietary preferences.
She looked at Carlo.
"Efficient," she said.
"Mr. Marchetti is efficient," Carlo agreed. He had a face that had been handsome once and had become distinguished: deep-set dark eyes, silver hair swept back, a warmth to his manner that was completely at odds with everything else she’d encountered in the last three hours. He reminded her, uncomfortably, of the grandfather she’d adored. "Is there anything else you need tonight, Ms. Voss?"
"Information."
He tilted his head.
"What is the scope of the embezzlement? How many accounts? What time period do the records cover? What systems does the organisation use for financial management?" She held up a hand at his expression. "I’m not trying to map anything tonight. I need to understand the shape of the problem so I can plan the methodology. That’s not a security risk. It’s a prerequisite."
Carlo looked at her for a moment with the expression of a man reassessing an assumption.
"Mr. Marchetti will brief you fully in the morning," he said. "For tonight, the records span four years. The primary accounts are in the legitimate Marchetti Properties structure, but we believe money has also moved through three subsidiary entities. The accounting system is…" He paused, selecting the word. "Layered."
"Layered," Nora repeated.
"We have three in-house accountants who have been working on it for six weeks without… conclusive results."
"I’ll want their notes. Even the wrong conclusions are useful."
Carlo nodded. "Goodnight, Ms. Voss." He moved toward the door, then paused. "Your cat will be seen to. I have the neighbour’s number."
She blinked. "Thank you."
After he left the lock engaged from the outside, subtle but present, she noted the sound of it. Nora stood in the middle of the expensive room and performed a rapid and honest assessment of her situation.
She was being held against her will by a criminal organisation. This was, objectively, bad.
She had skills that made her valuable enough to keep alive. This was good.
The man who held her had, in the course of a forty-minute conversation, demonstrated a specific intelligence that she found against her will interesting. This was, she decided, entirely irrelevant, and she was going to continue deciding that for as long as it took.
At seven AM, someone knocked.
⁂ ⁂ ⁂
It was a young man she hadn’t seen before early twenties, dark hair, a grin that was completely disarming and seemed to know it. He held a tray: coffee, real coffee, the smell of it reaching her before the door was fully open, along with a breakfast she hadn’t asked for and wouldn’t have known to ask for because it was exactly what she would have chosen.
"Ms. Voss." He sounded delighted to meet her, which was strange. "I’m Gio. Giovanni Marchetti. Dom’s brother." He offered the tray. "He said you needed good coffee before you could think. I’m beginning to like you."
Nora took the tray. "You’re the Don’s brother."
"Younger, significantly more charming. You’ll find me much easier to deal with." He leaned against the doorframe with the energy of someone who had never been told not to lean against things. "For what it’s worth, I think this whole situation is —" he waved his hand — "unusual. Even for us."
"Unusual."
"We don’t usually recruit people this way."
"With kidnapping."
"I prefer ‘compelled invitation,’" he said, without any apparent embarrassment. "Dom doesn’t really have another gear when something is urgent."
"What’s his gear when things aren’t urgent?"
Gio appeared to think about this. "Also intense, but quieter about it." He straightened from the doorframe. "He’s ready when you are. Take your time with the coffee. He’ll pretend he’s not impatient but he will be."
Nora looked at the coffee. Looked at the door.
"Gio."
"Ms. Voss."
"Is your brother usually honest?"
A pause. Something shifted in Gio’s expression became more considered, less performance. "Yes," he said. "He’s many things that are worth being afraid of. But he doesn’t lie. It’s… one of the things."
"One of the things," she repeated.
"There’s a list," he said, with a smile that conceded something without specifying what. "See you at breakfast, Ms. Voss."
- Writer
