At eleven forty, Zara Moreau zipped her whole life into a duffel bag.
In twenty minutes she would stop being Lia Marr, and Verdano would never see either of them again.
The knock never came. The door just ripped off its top hinge and swung in.
Ennio: Evening, locksmith.
The bald one smiled like he already owned the room and everything standing in it.
Zara went for the window. She got one hand on the frame before a fist closed on her wrist.
Tullio: Uh uh. Or keep fighting. I like it better when they fight.
Tullio bent her arm up her spine and walked her into the wall. Her cheek hit plaster.
Pain went white behind her eyes, and she tasted blood where her own teeth cut her lip.
Ennio: Easy. Saverin wants her hands working.
Tullio: He didn't say nothing about her face.
Tullio: So you're the little cunt who picks locks. The one who don't ask questions.
Tullio: Tonight you don't ask fucking nothing.
He pulled her duffel off the bed and turned it over. Cash fanned across the floor. Eight months of saving.
Tullio: Well, shit. Little Miss Locksmith's been robbing somebody.
Zara: It's mine. I earned every note of it.
Tullio: Speak when I ask you a fucking question, bitch.
Blood ran warm off her chin and spotted the front of her jacket.
Ennio: That's enough.
He said it flat, like he'd said it a hundred times. Tullio stepped back and shook out his hand.
Ennio: Here's the deal. There's a safe. You open it, you walk away, we forget tonight.
Ennio: You don't open it, my friend takes you out on the water. They never find the ones that go in the harbor.
She believed him. He hadn't said it like a threat. He'd said it like a schedule.
Zara: I need my tools. And I need to see the lock.
Saverin. The name crawled up her spine and sat there.
She'd seen Saverin Bellandi once, across a crowded room. Tall, black hair, a face like he'd never been told no.
She had run from that name for a year. Her body still remembered the look of him wrong, like a hand closing on the back of her neck.
Tullio: Move your ass.
Her shoulder caught the door frame and something in it popped.
Rain hit her face on the stairs. A black car waited with the engine running.
Ennio: Get in. And locksmith. Run, and I'll let him catch you instead.
She got in. The marks on her wrist were already going purple.
Midnight was twenty minutes away, and somewhere in this city a safe was waiting with her name on it.