POV: Aria
The better idea was this: we worked for him.
He didn't phrase it as a question and he didn't dress it up. He laid it out the way you'd explain directions to someone who needed to get somewhere and had no say in the route. Your crew. My operation. Starting now, ending only when I say. Which, the way he said it, sounded like it meant never, and the worst part was that he said it without raising his voice at all.
I stared at him.
"You want to own a street racing crew," I said.
"I want to own the fastest driver on the east coast and the people she won't leave behind." He paused. "The racing is a secondary benefit."
There was something almost reasonable in his tone and that was the most dangerous thing about it. Men who sounded unreasonable were easy to resist. Men who sounded like they were just describing a situation, like the situation was simply the situation and your feelings about it were your own problem, those men were harder.
I looked past him at his eight men. They hadn't moved. They wouldn't until he told them to. That was fifteen years of loyalty or fifteen years of something that looked the same from outside and I didn't have time to figure out which.
"Define the work," I said.
"Transport. Extraction. Delivery under pressure. Everything you already do, for better pay and significantly more protection."
"And if I say no."
He didn't answer right away. He looked at me with that even, unreadable look that I'd been trying to decode since the parking level filled up, and then he said: "You have three people I can see and one I can't. Sofia, on the street below. She thinks she's hidden."
My stomach dropped but my face didn't.
"She's been monitoring this conversation from the third floor of the structure across the street since before we arrived," he said. "My man has been beside her for the last twelve minutes."
I didn't move. I didn't look away. I ran the calculation fast and quietly and what I came up with was that if Sofia were already dead he would have led with it, which meant she was still alive, which meant that was still leverage and not a demonstration.
That calculation was the only thing keeping me upright right then.
"If you refuse," Matteo said, "I'll start with whoever is easiest to reach. One per minute. Until you agree or until the question stops being relevant."
"The question stops being relevant when my crew is gone," I said.
"Yes," he said. Like that was a reasonable outcome. Like he'd thought about it and it sat fine with him.
I thought about Mika, who had a sister in Queens and a bad temper and had been my problem and my backup for four years. I thought about Dez, quiet and steady, who once drove six hours in the wrong direction to pick me up from a job that went sideways and never mentioned it again. I thought about Sofia, across the street somewhere, watching through a scope and understanding exactly what I was about to do and why.
I thought about the girl in the van, who hadn't made a sound and whose name I didn't know and who had ended up there because someone put her there, and I had not yet done a single useful thing about that.
"You'd run your operation on people who are here because you threatened them," I said.
"I run my operation on people who understand that I keep my word," he said. "The entry point doesn't change that."
"And the girl."
Something shifted in him. Smaller than before, but there.
"The girl is a separate problem," he said.
"She's not separate from me," I said. "Not anymore. You want my crew, she's part of what comes with it. She gets somewhere safe, she gets her name run, and whoever put her in that crate gets handed to someone who will do something about it. That's not negotiable."
The silence after that was a different quality than the others. He was looking at me the way he did when I first got out of the van, like a question, but the question had changed shape. I didn't know what the new shape was. I didn't have time to figure it out.
"You're in no position to set terms," he said.
"I'm in the only position that lets you use me," I said. "If you wanted someone afraid, you'd have the wrong driver. I know exactly what I do and why it matters to you and I'll do it well, but not for nothing and not for someone I don't trust."
"You don't trust me," he said.
"Not yet."
That landed. I saw it land. He didn't react to it with anything dramatic, just a slight adjustment in the way he was standing, the kind of shift that happened when something landed somewhere it didn't expect to go.
"One crew member. Right now. Proof of concept." He looked at me steadily. "Your tall one. Dez. He walks to my vehicle, alone. If he's still standing in five minutes, you have a version of my word."
I turned and looked at Dez for the first time since it started.
Dez looked back at me. He'd already heard it. His face was the same as it always was, careful and watchful, and he raised his chin very slightly, which meant he'd do it, which meant he was trusting me, which was the thing that cost me more than anything Matteo had said.
"Five minutes," I said to Matteo.
"Five minutes," he said.
Dez moved. He didn't hesitate, didn't look at anyone but me for one last second, and then he was walking. Two of Matteo's men fell into step beside him and they crossed the level and I watched them go and I did not watch Matteo because watching Matteo right then was not something I could afford to do clearly.
My phone vibrated in my pocket. One buzz. Sofia's signal for eyes on, still watching, still there.
Then it vibrated again. Twice. Fast and close together.
That wasn't a signal I'd taught her. That wasn't a signal we had.
I pulled it out. Screen facing me, one new message, unknown number, four words.
He doesn't own you.
I looked up.
Matteo was watching my face with an expression I hadn't seen on him before, and for the first time since the headlights dropped, he looked like something had surprised him.
"Who sent that," he said.