Morning came gray over the water, and new voices came up the stairs with it.
Three of Saverio's men carried laptops onto the long table and opened them like weapons.
Saverio: Two weeks and the north clinic's books are still open. Somebody is reading them.
Luca: Then hire somebody better than your boys, because your boys are useless.
Saverio: I already have somebody. Sparrow.
Luca: The ghost? Nobody's ever seen that fucker's face.
Saverio: That's what makes them the best.
Renata stood by the window with her coffee and did not let her hand shake.
Sparrow was the one name she had never said out loud in this house.
Luca: Some basement bitch with a keyboard, more like.
Saverio: Say that again and I'll take your tongue for it.
Luca shut his mouth so fast his teeth clicked.
Luca: You spread your legs on this floor and now you think you sit at the table.
Luca: Sit down, maid. The grown men are working.
Two of the men laughed, low and crude, and wiped their mouths with the backs of their hands.
Saverio: Luca. Open your mouth about her again and you'll limp for a month.
Renata: Let him talk. I've been called worse by better men than him.
Luca: Better men. Hear that. The maid's grading us now.
Saverio: I put a price on the boards last night. A job, a sum, and a way to answer.
Saverio: You. What do you make of a hacker who won't show their face?
Renata: I'd say they've met men like you before.
Saverio: And what do men like me do?
Renata: Offer a price and call it trust.
Saverio: Sparrow is worth ten of every man in this room. Remember that when you judge them.
She shut her door at noon and turned the key herself, the way she had every day since she took the floor.
The laptop she never left in the open woke with a soft click.
The post was still there, signed in Saverio's own words: a price, a job, no face needed.
Her answer went back in four lines, cold as a bill.
Renata: No face. No name. Half now, half when the file is in your hand.
She read it twice, then sent it. Her hands were steady.
Saverio: The ghost answered.
Luca: Then it's a trap.
Saverio: Then it's a smart ghost. I said I wanted the best.
Saverio: Sparrow wants money with no leash. Sound familiar?
Renata: You said you'd pay for the best. Now pay.
Saverio: Whoever they are, I'd like to shake that hand. Or wring that neck.
Luca: Bet it's some scarred-up bitch who's wet for a man who can pay.
Saverio: One more word about Sparrow and I'll pull your teeth out with pliers.
Luca's grin died. Renata kept her eyes on her hands and her heart pounded once, hard.
Luca: The Sartori girl cried for the clinic board this morning. Said her sister stole from the family.
Saverio: And the board?
Luca: They believed the tears.
Renata set the mug down before her hand could shake.
Twenty-three years in that house, and Fiorella's tears still opened every door Renata was locked out of.
Saverio: They'll come for your keys with lawyers next. Want me to stop them?
Renata: I want to watch them try.
Saverio: When I find out who Sparrow is, I'll hand them everything I have. And if they've been lying to me, I'll take it back slow.
He said it looking straight at her, and she held his eyes without flinching.
He already had the answer shut in a room upstairs. The only question left was what he would do when he learned it.