Page 23 of Secrets in the Dark

His gaze swept the room, lingering momentarily on me before continuing. "We will find who did this. In the meantime, tomorrow night's performance will proceed as scheduled."

Protests erupted immediately. Val silenced them with a raised hand. "Enzo's right. The show continues. We'll adjust the staging to work without the main lighting grid."

"But someone tried to kill you," Riley objected. "We can't just pretend this didn't happen."

"No one is pretending anything," Enzo interjected. "But we won't give whoever did this the satisfaction of shutting us down. The Jade Petal does not bow to intimidation."

As the meeting disbanded, I remained seated, paralyzed by the implications. The stalker who'd followed me from my real life hadn't just found me at the Jade Petal. They were escalating to potentially lethal sabotage.

I watched Enzo conferring with his security team, his demeanor coolly professional. He was saying all the right things, making all the right promises about finding the culprit and ensuring everyone's safety.

Yet something in his manner raised alarm bells in my mind. The way his eyes had lingered on me specifically. The subtle tension in his posture when addressing the sabotage.

A chilling possibility formed: what if Enzo already knew who was responsible? What if his promises of additional security were theater, not protection?

As if sensing my scrutiny, he looked up, meeting my gaze across the room. No surprise registered in his expression—only cold assessment, as if measuring my potential threat level.

In that moment, with absolute certainty, I knew Enzo Grimaldi was lying.

The sabotage had been deliberate. The target had been Val—or perhaps me. And the head of security, the very person tasked with protecting us, knew more than he was revealing.

I was trapped in a casino where someone wanted me dead, with nowhere left to run, and no way to know who I could trust.

Chapter Six

Roman

The backstage area was eerily quiet five hours after the lighting grid collapse. Technical crews had cordoned off the danger zone with yellow caution tape but otherwise left the wreckage untouched—standard procedure when preserving evidence.

I slipped past the night security guard with a nod, flashing my dealer credentials and muttering something about retrieving a forgotten item. The skeleton crew working the graveyard shift paid little attention to staff movement, particularly someone with high-limit clearance.

Once alone in the theater, I assessed the damage properly. Two thousand pounds of professional lighting equipment lay shattered across the main stage. Glass from broken bulbsglittered against the dark flooring like fallen stars. Metal framework twisted at unnatural angles—the grid had buckled as it fell, narrowly missing Valentina Reyes by mere feet.

This hadn't been an equipment failure. This was attempted murder.

I pulled a small penlight from my pocket and moved toward the ceiling mounting points. The theater's catwalk system remained intact, accessible via a narrow metal staircase in the wings. I climbed carefully, testing each step before committing my weight.

The mounting brackets where the grid had been attached told a clear story. I crouched for a closer look, photographing the evidence with my phone's camera. The damage pattern was unmistakable to anyone with tactical training: the bolts hadn't failed—they'd been deliberately weakened with precise saw cuts, approximately seventy percent through the metal. Not enough to cause immediate failure, but sufficient to guarantee eventual collapse under normal operational stress.

"Professional work," I muttered, examining the clean cut patterns.

This wasn't an amateur job. The saboteur had technical knowledge of load-bearing mechanics and enough access to work undetected. Most importantly, they'd known exactly when the grid would fail—during the full technical rehearsal when the maximum vibration from sound systems would stress the weakened supports.

I captured several more photos, focusing on the precise angle of the cuts. Later analysis might identify the specific tool used—information that could eventually connect to a suspect when we secured search warrants.

A soft creak from the stage below froze me in place. I extinguished my light and pressed against the catwalk railing, minimizing my silhouette. After thirty seconds of silence, I moved again, this time toward the control booth where the lighting systems were managed.

The booth revealed additional evidence: the monitoring system that should have detected weight distribution abnormalities had been disconnected—not disabled or tampered with, simply unplugged from its power source. Such a basic sabotage technique suggested inside knowledge; the saboteur understood that a more sophisticated interference might trigger backup alarms.

I photographed the disconnected system before plugging it back in. The monitors flickered to life, immediately registering multiple system failures. Too late to prevent the catastrophe, but the timestamp of reactivation would help establish a timeline for the investigation.

As I exited the booth, my phone vibrated against my hip—a notification from the surveillance system I'd installed in Enzo's office. The passive bug, designed to activate only during specific conversation patterns related to our case parameters, had captured something.

I ducked into an empty dressing room and plugged earbuds into my phone to review the recording. Enzo's distinctive voice came through clearly, the slight Italian accent more pronounced than usual—a stress tell I'd noticed previously.

"Merchandise moves as scheduled. Thursday during the final blackout. The Dragon's Crown exchange happens exactly as planned."

A pause, then Enzo continued, evidently responding to someone on the phone: "No, Licata wants no delays. ThePetal distraction is already handled—it'll cover any unusual activity in the high-roller areas. Security will be focused on the entertainment wing, not the VIP lounges."

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