Chapter 4

A suit like the one in her photograph, the kind that cost as much as a soldier earned in a season, one stain and it was ruined for good.

Looks like without me around to stop her in this life, she still went ahead and pulled the same stunt. Only, I'm guessing it didn't go quite as smoothly this time.

She hadn't looked too pleased yesterday when she came to me, sweet as poison, begging me to put my mark on that pact.

Now, I'm really curious. How is Carmela planning to cover the price of a forty-thousand-dollar suit?

A week later, the Atlas people put the word out through their front, announcing the ledgers would go into production. They named me, the one who'd chronicled it all.

Ten minutes later, Carmela called.

"Adriana! Didn't you already swear those ledgers over to our house? How come you gave them to Atlas too? The pact is exclusive!"

She didn't even let me get a word in, just came at me the second I answered, rattling it off like a Tommy gun.

"When did I ever swear anything to you?" I asked.

"Adriana, come on. Don't be greedy. I even walked through every line with you before the oath. Your mark is right there on the pact, you set it down yourself. I can't cover for you this time."

And with that she hung up, quick as a knife withdrawn.

She was so sure of herself it almost made me laugh. If I hadn't set that camera in the shadows, I might've really taken the fall for this.

Half an hour later, the Blanco outfit, the media front where Carmela worked as a low associate, put out their own word. The rights to my ledgers were unclean, they said, and they intended to bring the matter before the Commission and demand tribute in restitution.

Same ledgers. Same author. Two houses, both known names in the business of turning documented knowledge into currency.

Naturally, the moment it broke, the whole network lit up.

People don't play gentle when it comes to a thing owned twice. Selling the same secret to two families? The neighborhood will tear you apart for it.

Sure enough, the whisper war reached me within minutes, my name passed mouth to mouth and marked with contempt.

At the same time, Carmela dropped her own poison quietly into the network.

Everyone pays for their own greed.

She even tied my working name and the title of the ledgers to it, plain for anyone to read.

Of course the neighborhood did what the neighborhood does and put the pieces together fast. She wasn't only my sworn sister, she was a soldier of the Blanco house too.

After that it broke wide open, and the poison kept coming, more of it every hour.

Atlas's man reached out, rattled, asking what in God's name was happening.

I stayed steady and gave it to him straight. I swore the ledgers to Atlas alone. You are the only house that paid me a cent.

Atlas was an old, established name, so they read the room fast.

Their consigliere moved on it at once and told me they would settle the matter without delay.

And in that same stretch, the woman planted low among them, the one who'd ended up Salvatore's wife in the life before, had just come up through their ranks.

Even without the coffee this time, she still rose to the boss's right hand within a week. I'd wager Carmela was seething.

But with the whole tangle over the ledgers, she didn't have the nerve to carry her grievance to Salvatore.

So she turned on Francesca, the one planted low instead.

Salvatore kept shielding the girl, and Carmela's hatred only swelled.

One noon, during the quiet hour, Carmela slipped a pair of the girl's stockings into Salvatore's drawer, then played the wounded party, swearing the low associate had been trying to work her way into the boss's bed.

The place fell into chaos that day, and it ended with the girl stripped of her place on the spot for "trying to seduce the boss."

All of it came straight from the fixer I'd put on Carmela the moment I came back, the watcher I'd set to shadow her every move.

This whisper war she'd staged was only a bonus he'd turned up.

But truthfully, I no longer had the strength to care. The poison was thickening, my messages full of the ugliest things people could think to say.

Once the last piece of proof was in my hands, I made the call.

"Lucia, I need to bring someone before the Commission."

"Understood. Send me everything."