Page 4 of Veil of Ashes

“Yes I have.” She looks up finally, and I catch a glimpse of her lips. They look soft and inviting.

“And what is your response?” I try to put the images forming in my head away.

“I don’t fix dead men’s mistakes,” she says with a tone of finality.

I drag a chair from the wall, flip it backward, and straddle it like I own the place. She watches every movement like she’s trying to decide where to stab if I lunge. Smart girl.

“Rizzi isn’t just a mistake,” I say. “He’s a crack in the foundation. You know what happens when those spread.”

She shrugs. “Buildings fall. Not my problem.”

I pull the USB from my jacket pocket and place it on a bench.

“This is.”

She doesn’t reach for it. Just stares.

“It’s encrypted,” I add. “Ledger entries, dates, offshore aliases. Everything Rizzi touched. And every name he sold.”

That gets her.

Not visibly. But she breathes differently. Her cigarette burns faster, smoke curling up into the overhead vent as her mouth tightens around the filter.

“Why me?” she asks.

“Because I don’t need loyalty. I need talent. And I need it now.”

Her laugh is small and bitter. “You Veyra boys keep mistaking desperation for skill. I’m not your pet hacker.”

“You’re not anyone’s anything,” I say. “That’s why I’m here.”

She plucks the USB off the table. Spins it once in her fingers. Sets it down again.

“You think waving a corpse and some cash makes me your puppet? You don’t know me.”

“I don’t need to know you. Just need your hands steady and your brain faster than the ones coming for us.”

She lights another cigarette off the old one. Flicks ash into a dish shaped like a hollowed-out bullet casing. The kind of trophy only a survivor keeps.

“I’ve been off the grid for a reason.”

I nod. “I’m trying to give you a better one to come back on.”

We sit in the thick space between. Neither of us talks. Her ink-stained fingers tap once against her knee. Then twice. Rhythm. Habit. Control.

I wait for the moment to land. Then I drop it.

“Enzo D’Agostino,” I say softly. “That’s who Rizzi stole from.”

She freezes.

The air between us drops ten degrees, just from her eyes narrowing. That name is a blade. And she just swallowed it.

“Enzo’s dead,” she says flatly.

“Not to Rizzi’s ledger, he’s not.”

She doesn’t move. Doesn’t ask how I know her father’s name. But I can see it—all of it—behind those cold eyes: the math of betrayal, the tremor she hides in her breath, the names she’s buried and now hears ringing in her ears again.

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