Redacted Desires

CHAPTER FOUR

The email arrived at eight fifty-three.

Andrea read it first. She set her coffee down and said nothing. I read it twice.

Cassius Moretti. New Head of Strategic Operations and Research and Finance oversight, effective immediately.

“Well, I didn't see that coming,” Andrea said.

“Well,” I said.

We went back to our screens.

Cassius arrived an hour later.

He stood at the front of the floor and the room went quiet without being asked.

“I’ll keep this brief.” His voice was low and even, the kind that didn’t need volume because it had never needed it. “Nothing about how this department operates changes. You’ll continue reporting through your existing channels. The difference is that those channels now run through me.” He paused. “I don’t manage by committee. If something is wrong I expect to know before it becomes a problem. If you’re uncertain about something, ask. I’d rather answer a question than fix a mistake.”

His eyes moved across the room once and found mine for a second that didn’t quite match the neutrality of everything else about him.

Then it was over and he left. He slightly nodded his head and made his way towards the CEO’s office.

The floor didn’t go back to what it was. People were talking, not loudly, but his name was moving desk to desk like a current underneath everything.

I went back to my screen and thought about nothing in particular.

About thirty minutes later my phone rang. The hospital. Sadie’s voice on the other end, careful. Mamma had taken a sudden turn. They were already there.

I informed Andrea and left as quickly as I could.

Dr. Reeves had the kind of face that prepared you before his mouth did.

He walked me to the small room off the corridor and sat across from me and folded his hands on the table and I watched him do all of it and knew before a single word came out.

“Sienna.” He said then paused.“Your mother’s current treatment isn’t holding the way we’d hoped. The cancer has progressed into the lymph nodes which changes our approach significantly.” He paused. “There’s a specialist we recommend — Dr. Adeyemi. She’s had considerable success with cases presenting like your mother’s. The treatment she uses is more aggressive, more targeted.” Another pause.”Your mother’s insurance will continue covering what it currently covers. But Dr. Adeyemi’s protocol sits entirely outside that. The full course is out of pocket.”

Then he gave me the number.

It landed heavily, settling into everything beneath it.

I thanked him. Shook his hand. Walked back down the corridor and stood in the doorway of my mother’s room — the burgundy headscarf, the slow rise and fall of her chest, her hands folded lightly over the blanket — and my siblings sitting side by side with her. I sat next to Sam and held his hand. His face looked teary. I held my mother's hand and listened to the quiet of the hospital — the nurses’ station down the hall, a trolley somewhere, the soft machinery of a building organized entirely around keeping people alive.

After a while, I kissed her forehead and left with Sam after several attempts to convince him. Sadie decided to stay behind.

I stood at the car park and the number sat with me the way it had since Dr. Reeves said it. I put my salary next to it. Put the bill next to it. Put six months of careful budgeting next to it.

None of it touched the number.

Cassius’ POV

Deleray Private night club - 12:57 a.m

Max finished the brief in the car. Lorenzo Bianchi, a business associate of ours. Eight months skimming Moretti supplies under the assumption that small meant invisible.

I straightened my cuff and got out of the car.

No name on the door.

Inside — low light, low music, the particular atmosphere of a place that existed exclusively after dark.

He had twelve men with him.

Lorenzo was at the third table from the back, facing the door. He clocked me crossing the room and buried what crossed his face beneath a smile.

I sat down uninvited.

“Moretti.” He opened his arms like a man welcoming an old friend. “I wasn’t expecting you personally. Can I get you something?”

“No.”

He leaned back, easy, comfortable. “Look — whatever you’ve heard, I can explain—”

“August fourteenth,” I said. “Forty-two thousand. September second, sixty-one thousand. September nineteenth, thirty-eight thousand.” I went through every date, every amount, eight months without a single note in front of me, and I watched his face perform relaxed while everything behind it ran calculations that were coming up short. “Should I continue?”

The smile stayed but it was working hard now.

“There’s been a misunderstanding,” he said. “The routes were compromised on our end — we lost product, the numbers reflect—”

“Lorenzo.”

He stopped.

“The routes weren’t compromised. I have the manifests.”

The smile finally let go.

He tried a different angle — leaned forward, lowered his voice, the language of two men being reasonable. “Listen. I can have everything returned within the week. Every cent. Consider it an error in accounting, we move forward, no damage done.”

“The damage is done.”

His jaw tightened. He looked at his men briefly — twelve of them positioned around the room, a number he’d decided was a wall — and something shifted in his posture. The last card.

“You know who I know?” he said. “Benedetti. You want to do this, you’re doing it with him watching.”

I looked at him for the first time like he was worth looking at.

“Benedetti’s been dead eleven months,” I said. “Try again.”

The room went stillOne of his men moved his hand beneath the table.

I didn’t look at him. “I wouldn’t.”

The hand stopped.

Lorenzo looked at me and I looked at him and the story behind his eyes ran its full course and arrived somewhere we both already knew.

He made his choice.

Lorenzo’s hand moved toward his jacket.

He didn’t get far.

Two of my men rained bullets on him before he could react. The sound swallowed itself in the music of the club. Lorenzo’s chair went back with him in it and the room froze in that particular suspended second between a thing happening and everyone present accepting that it had happened.

The glass Lorenzo had been holding was still rolling across the table when I spoke.

“Hands.” My voice came out the same way it always did — level, unhurried, the same register I’d used reading his numbers back to him. Every remaining man in the room complied. “Good.”

I looked at them, all eleven, one by one, unhurried — and let the silence do what silence did in rooms like this.

“Your employer made a choice,” I said. “That choice was his. Not yours.” I straightened my jacket. “The routes will be restored and the outstanding amount will be returned in full by Friday. You do that and tonight is simply a night that happened.” I paused. “You don’t — and it won’t be one of my father’s men next time.”

Nobody spoke. Nobody moved.

I buttoned my jacket and walked out.

The cold hit immediately.

Max fell into step beside me. “Hungry?”

“Yeah.”

We got in the car.

“Tell my father it’s done.”

Max made the call. I looked out the window and said nothing else.

Dante’s watch ticked against my wrist. The inside man sat at the back of everything.

My building appeared. I got out without a word.

The night had the particular silence of something unfinished.