Page 59 of Veil of Smoke

“No,” he snaps, and for the first time his voice cracks. “She was a variable. We tracked the drop—figured if someone came to retrieve it, we’d have our opening. She was never the target. We just needed eyes.”

“Don’t lie to me.” My hand shifts the blade’s angle. “You got close. You knew her.”

He breathes through his teeth. “Yeah. I did.”

“And you didn’t warn her?”

“She wasn’t supposed to be in it. I kept the mess off her as long as I could. But when the dock incident happened, I couldn’t cover anymore. Corradino made a move.”

I slam him harder into the bricks. “You let her walk blind into that dock.”

“I tried to pull her off the grid!” Ignazio hisses. “She wouldn’t listen. She doesn’t trust me anymore.”

“She shouldn’t.”

He glares at me. “And she trusts you? You’re a killer, Valtieri. She’s safer with me.”

“She was never safe with you.”

A long pause. The city hums around us—bass thudding through brick walls, distant car horns, the whisper of wet tires down the street. My blade doesn’t move.

“You’ve been watching her,” I say.

He doesn’t answer.

“For how long?”

“…Three months.”

“You’ve been watching her. Letting her think she was free. Untouched.” I step back just enough to look him in the eye. “She wasn’t a florist to you. She was a file.”

“She was more than that,” he says, barely above a whisper.

And I see it—the guilt. Not performative. Real. Doesn’t make me feel better.

“You fed her to wolves. She just didn’t know she was bleeding.”

Ignazio drops his head against the wall. Rainwater trickles down the side of his face, or maybe he’s sweating now.

“She was giving us everything. By existing. By standing in that shop every day. By handing flowers to killers and not knowing they were killers.”

“You used her ignorance.”

He nods.

I press the blade to his throat again. This time harder. “Give me one reason not to open your throat right here.”

“Because if I die,” he croaks, “she becomes the next target.”

I go still.

He keeps talking. “There’s a file. She’s connected now. Caldera, the docks, the tech—you. If I vanish, they’ll bury it. Bury her. Make her disappear like she never existed.”

I pull back half an inch. Just enough to think.

My thumb slides off the edge of the blade. “You’re not lying.”

“I wish I was.”

---