Page 183 of Mine Again
“The transaction passed through seven shell companies. Clean.Nearly invisible.”
My jaw flexes.
“But the last one was a dormant Delaware LLC. Buried so deep, it took days to decrypt.”
I sit back down in my office chair, swiveling to face her.
“The original registration listed Carter James Hale.”
Isa doesn’t speak. Her eyes are wide, stunned, the way someone might look after seeing a magician pull the impossible from thin air.
And ithadbeen almost impossible. I dug through every hidden pathway, every keystroke. It took a kind of mental sharpness most people will never understand.
“And just like that,” I finish, “the Jackal had a face.”
She leans back, absorbing this latest revelation. Her gaze drifts over the screens, the servers, the faint hum of the hardware around us as she begins to understand just how much I can do from this room.
“Wow,” she breathes, almost to herself. “You… are incredible.”
Her eyes are bright, fixed on me with something that feels like admiration and pride all tangled together.
“I knew you were good, but this… this is another level. You didn’t just figure it out, Luca. You outsmarted someone who prides himself on being untouchable.”
Her praise burns into me, sinking under my skin and igniting a heat I can’t name, equal parts hunger and the fierce need to keep earning it.
“Can I see a picture of Hale?” Isa asks. “So I’ll recognize him if we ever cross paths.”
I hope that never happens, but it’s smart for her to be prepared.
I press a key, the dark monitors flaring to life, lines of code giving way to a grid of windows as I pull up Hale’s photo. She stares at it, taking it in, until her gaze snags on a camera feed in the corner of the monitor.
Her eyes linger, the proud smile from earlier fading. She sits a touch straighter, her jaw tightening.
“That’s my bedroom,” she says, leaning in, studying the image.
I glance at the screen and wait for her reaction.
“I took down the camera on my birthday.”
She did, and I was distraught watching it. Not sending her chocolates yet again to tell her I remembered was harder for me than tracking down the Jackal’s identity.
It was the first concrete sign in those five years that she was giving up on us, making me more determined than ever to get her out of Sicily and back into my arms.
But that’s in the past. A past we are both moving on from. So I don’t reply.
Her shoulders stiffen, and she leans back, the warmth in her eyes cooling fast.
“How is there another feed?” She turns to me, her voice sharper now.
“It’s a different angle,” she says, returning her focus to the monitor. “What the heck, Luca? When did you install that one?”
The pride and curiosity in her eyes are gone, replaced by irritation, and I can feel the air between us changing.
I study her, caught off guard that she seems unhappy. She’s always known I like to watch her, and I thought she found comfort in it.
“I installed it about nine months after the first one,” I explain. “A maid came close to discovering the first one when she took the curtains down to wash, and I wanted a backup.”
She gives me an incredulous look. “And you didn’t think to tell me?”
