Chapter Four- The Devil's Term
1274 Words
She picked the phone up from the floor.
Her hands were steady.
She was surprised by that.
"If you have hurt him" she started.
"He is perfectly fine," Viktor said. The voice was smooth. Educated. The particular calm of someone who had never needed to raise it to get what they wanted. "Dante is my guest. Not my prisoner. There is a difference."
"That is exactly what a prisoner would say," she said.
A pause. Then something that sounded almost like amusement.
"You are exactly as interesting as I was told," Viktor said. "Good. I prefer interesting people. They make better conversations."
She stood up from the bed. Moved to the window. The estate grounds were dark and quiet below security lights casting long shadows across the gravel. Somewhere out there men with guns were walking perimeter routes and none of it mattered because the danger was already inside her phone.
"What do you want," she said.
"Information," he said simply. "You are inside Lucian Mori's estate. You have access to his medical records. His schedule. His vulnerabilities." A pause. "I want those things."
"No."
"Miss Adeyemi"
"No." She kept her voice flat. Certain. "I made a deal with Lucian Mori. I keep my word."
"Even for your brother's life?"
The question landed like something physical.
She gripped the phone tighter.
"Dante is alive," she said. "You just told me that. Which means he is valuable to you. Which means you are not going to hurt him as long as you think I might cooperate." She kept her voice steady. "So we both know this conversation is not actually a threat. It is a negotiation."
Silence on the other end.
Longer this time.
"You are very calm for someone in your position," Viktor said.
"I have been in worse positions," she said. "I grew up in Lagos. This is Tuesday."
Another pause.
Then he laughed.
Genuine. Short. Surprised out of him.
"Twenty four hours," he said when he stopped. "I will give you twenty four hours to reconsider. After that Dante's situation becomes considerably less comfortable." The amusement left his voice completely. "Do not test me Miss Adeyemi. I am not as patient as Lucian."
The call ended.
She stood at the window for a long moment.
Then she turned and walked out of the room.
Lucian's office was at the end of the east wing.
She knew because Chiara had shown her earlier and she had filed it away the way she filed everything automatically, precisely, in the part of her mind that collected useful information without being asked.
She knocked once.
"Come in."
He was at his desk. Working at midnight like it was the middle of the afternoon. He looked up when she entered and something shifted in his expression not surprise exactly. More like recognition. Like he had been expecting her and was confirming an assumption.
"Sit down," he said.
This time she sat.
She put her phone on the desk between them and pressed play on the recorded call.
She had hit record four seconds in. She had lost the first part her own voice saying no but Viktor's words were clear. His name. His offer. The threat against Dante.
Lucian listened without moving.
Without expression.
Without making a single sound.
When it ended he sat back in his chair and looked at her across the desk with those dark eyes and said nothing for a long moment.
"You recorded it," he said finally.
"Four seconds in," she said. "I lost the beginning."
"Why did you record it?"
"Because I knew you would need proof." She held his gaze. "And because I knew you would come for Dante."
Something moved across his face.
"You don't know that," he said.
"Dante was taken because of me," she said. "Which means he was taken because of you. Because of your deal." She kept her voice even. "You are a man who keeps his word. That means Dante is your responsibility as much as mine."
The silence stretched.
Lucian looked at her for a long time.
Then he leaned forward.
"Viktor has been three steps ahead of me for three years," he said quietly. "He moves people like chess pieces. He is patient and he is precise and he does not make mistakes." He held her gaze. "Taking your brother is not a coincidence. It is a message."
"What kind of message?"
"That he knows about our deal." His jaw tightened. "Which means he has someone inside this estate feeding him information."
Sera thought about Chiara in the hallway.
Someone went to a great deal of trouble to make the evidence look real.
"Enzo," she said quietly.
Lucian's eyes sharpened.
"What do you know about Enzo?" he said.
"Chiara said he is very good at his job," she said carefully. "She also said she found it concerning that he made a mistake. Chiara doesn't strike me as someone who says things she doesn't mean."
Lucian was very still.
The kind of still that wasn't calm at all.
"Enzo has been with me for seven years," he said.
"I know," she said. "That is exactly the kind of person Viktor would spend seven years putting in place."
The room was completely silent.
She watched something move behind his eyes old and complicated and painful in the way that betrayal always was. She had seen that look before. On her mother's face. On Dante's. The particular expression of someone revising everything they thought they knew about a person they trusted.
"I'm sorry," she said quietly. And meant it.
He looked at her.
"Don't be sorry," he said. His voice completely controlled. "Be useful."
She nodded.
"Viktor gave me twenty four hours," she said. "We should use them."
Lucian stood.
Walked to the window his window, his habit, the place he went when he was thinking.
She waited.
"I will get your brother back," he said. Without turning around. Quiet and certain the way he said everything that mattered. "That is not a negotiation. That is a fact."
She looked at his back.
At the set of his shoulders.
At a man who had just found out someone he trusted for seven years had been betraying him and had decided in the space of five minutes to keep moving forward anyway.
She understood that.
More than she expected to.
"Lucian," she said.
He turned.
"Thank you," she said.
He looked at her for a moment.
Something in his expression shifted in a way she hadn't seen before. Not the controlled shift. Not the deliberate adjustment. Something underneath all of that.
Something that looked almost human.
"Get some sleep," he said. "Tomorrow is going to be difficult."
She stood up.
Picked up her phone.
Was almost at the door when his voice stopped her.
"Miss Adeyemi."
She turned.
He was looking at her across the room with those dark eyes and an expression she didn't have a name for yet.
"You came to me instead of running," he said quietly. "Instead of taking his offer and protecting your brother the easy way." A pause. "Why?"
She thought about it for exactly one second.
"Because easy has never once worked out for me," she said. "And because the right thing is usually the harder thing." She held his gaze. "And because I think you already knew that about me."
He said nothing.
But something in his eyes answered her anyway.
She walked out.
She was halfway down the hallway when she heard it.
A single gunshot.
From somewhere inside the estate.
Then silence.
Then Chiara's voice sharp and urgent cutting through the dark.
"Lucian. Enzo is dead."
- Writer
