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Iris finishes whatever text she’s working on and stows her phone in her pocket. Her eyes go to the window, and her frown goes from irritated to contemplative.
“Has she said anything?” she asks, passing me my black coffee and cradling her Assam tea in both hands.
“Nothing but lies,” I reply. The coffee is scalding, but I sip it anyway, letting the heat shock my body into more wakefulness. “How is Raleigh?”
“Unhurt. Mad as hell, but she won’t talk to me. I’ve given her some tea with honey she probably won’t drink, and ordered her to stay in bed.” Iris shrugs. “What lies?”
I shake my head. “She wants me to believe that she ran away from Morgan. That she wants to leave the mafia life.”
“And do what exactly?” Iris asks, one prim eyebrow raised.
“She didn’t say. Apparently, her cover story didn’t get that far,” I say, taking another sip of coffee. Clara’s cries are quieter now, but her face is still hidden. I hear myself say, “Tell me Raleigh just forgot to unplug her hairdryer.”
If it was an accident, the truce can hold a little longer, maybe even as long as I need it to. I can leverage Clara against Morgan and get some useful concessions from the negotiations.
Iris takes a long swallow of her tea, eyes pensive. I already know what she’ll say. “The fire did start in the hallway bathroom between Clara and Raleigh’s rooms, but there was a hell of a lot of gasoline spilled in there for it to be an accidental electrical fire.”
I sigh through my nose. “Fuck.”
“Indeed,” Iris agrees dryly.
“Signs of entry? Footprints?”
“Nothing. No locks broken or tampered with. And footprints are a bit harder to determine now that an entire crew of firefighters has been through the place, but our people found no signs of anyone else staking out the house.”
We fall quiet, listening to Clara finally cry herself out. Iris’s fingertips tap thoughtfully against the side of her mug.
“What do you remember about her?” I ask, not taking my eyes off the woman two windows away from me.
Iris hums. “She was a very warm child. Didn’t seem to know she was growing up in the middle of a mafia family. If you asked her, the old house was a palace, and your father was the king of a small country. So naive. Very close to her mother, Terra… and her uncle Morgan, despite his tempers. She asked about where her father was, once, and when Terra told her about the car accident, she didn't shed a tear. Instead, she offered her mother a comforting smile and said, "I'm so grateful to have you, Mom. We're so lucky to have each other." She and Raleigh were inseparable. The older they got, Terra and I would catch them in each other’s rooms at all hours of the morning. They’d be painting their nails and giggling over gossip rags they got from God only knows where.” She looks over at me, her eyebrow quirked again. “She had a massive crush on you, don’t know if you knew.”
I give her my driest look. “That’s hardly relevant now,” I lie, because of course I knew. Fifteen-year-old girls aren’t subtle, even to eighteen-year-old boys. I’d noticed Clara, too—her shy glances and lingering looks didn't escape me or my quickened pulse. And I’d used that knowledge against Clara hardly ten minutes ago.
Iris purses her lips, and I can tell she’s seen through me, as usual. I turn back to the window.
“So why would she try to kill Raleigh, her best friend, who she was inseparable from?” I ask.
“Ten years is… a long time,” Iris says, and there’s an emotion in her voice I didn’t expect. Sorrow. She takes a long draught of her tea, then continues. “Morgan is not a stable man. I’m sure he’s poured enough vitriol into her ear to last a lifetime. Whether she eventually started to believe it, or whether hearing it day in and day out turned her into her own brand of monster, it’s hard to say. But from what I can tell, someone inside that house started the fire. They could have been a professional who got in and out before the alarms went off. If Clara went into that house planning to kill Raleigh, there were easier ways to do it, and I find it hard to believe she would have made the mistake of getting herself caught.”
“Could she have had an accomplice? Someone who betrayed her and left her for dead?”
“That’s possible,” Iris muses. “Morgan never cared for his niece like she cared for him. Maybe he decided to kill two girls with one stone- destabilize us while giving himself a perfectly decent reason to plead innocent.”
I sigh again and finish the last of my coffee. “I need more time, Iris,” I tell her. “If Morgan is this determined to restart the war, I’ve got to distract him somehow.”
“I wouldn’t advise leveraging Clara,” Iris says immediately. “Morgan never gave two fucks about her before. Now that she’s potentially botched an assassination, he’d sooner kill her himself.”
I frown into my empty cup. There goes that idea.
Across the courtyard from us, Clara finally drags herself out of bed and starts wandering around her room. Iris finishes her tea and turns for the door. “I’ll be back. I have some calls to make.”
“At this hour?”
Iris pauses at the door, her lips quirked in a grim smile. “He’ll pick up at any hour if he knows what’s good for him.”
After she’s gone, I sit at my desk and stare at the cameras in Clara’s room. My eyes itch with fatigue, but I can’t let them rest. The horizon is just beginning to lighten, and I’ve got a very long day ahead of me.
CHAPTER 5
