Nobody touched the phone for a long moment.
It sat on Giulia's counter, screen still lit, the email glowing there like something that might bite if handled wrong. Elena stared at the name signed at the bottom until the letters stopped looking like letters and started looking like a verdict.
"Don't open anything else," Adrian said. "Not yet."
"There's nothing else to open," Giulia said. Her voice had steadied, some of the fear burning off into the particular clarity that comes after surviving the thing you were afraid of. "It's one line. That's all she sent."
Adrian picked up the phone himself, careful, the way you'd handle evidence. He read the email again. Then he looked up at Elena.
"She wants a meeting," he said. "Not a threat. An introduction." He set the phone down. "That's diffe
