Page 52 of The Rook’s Obsession

“No,” he agrees lightly. “It isn’t. I’m giving it to you for a reason.” He looks at each of us in turn before settling on me again. “If I describe it, you’ll form a picture. That picture will be wrong, or it will be incomplete, or it will be close enough to the truth that you’ll think you understand it before you actually do. What my father does in that room⁠—”

Whatever he’s seeing behind his eyes, it isn’t pleasant. “It would be better to witness it without expectation. You’ll understand why when you see it.”

The table goes quiet. Nick drums his fingers once along the edge, lightly. He’s arriving at the same conclusion I’ve already reached because he’s good at this. As good as I am.

Liam speaks before either of us can. “We’re supposed to walk into a situation blind on your word alone?”

“You’re supposed to walk in knowing everything except one detail,” Gabriel corrects him. “I’ll give you the location, the layout, the schedule—everything I have. The only thing I won’t give you in advance is the specifics of what you’ll find. That part you’ll see with your own eyes, and it will be enough.”

The three of us go tense, along with the guards standing behind us, when he reaches inside his jacket. All he pulls out is a folded piece of paper, which he sets on the table in front of the three of us. “The address. Membership only, no walk-ins, private security at the entrance and at least two more checkpoints inside. My father arrives at nine in the evening. The same room every time. He’s gone by midnight.”

Liam unfolds the paper. His face reveals nothing.

“There’s a staff entrance at the rear,” Gabriel continues. “Less traffic, no guest security checkpoint. Getting footage of my father would require someone already inside the building.”

He pauses again before adding, “Inside as an employee.”

I know exactly what he’s saying. Considering the way the men to my left and right sit up straighter and barely stop short of growling, they understand, too. There’s a solid chance this will end up being a battle, but it’s not a battle we’re going to fight here.

Gabriel waits, letting all of this sink in. When the silence has gone on long enough, he continues. “Leverage. It’s the only currency that works against a man like my father. Money won’t move him. He’s heard threats before. His network is too deep to dismantle piece by piece—you could spend years pulling at loose threads, and he would rebuild faster than you could work. But this?”

He taps the folded paper in front of Liam. “This would cost him everything he’s spent his life protecting. His allies would step back. His standing in the family would collapse. Men who deferred to him out of respect would find their respect suddenly very difficult to locate.”

He looks at me directly before adding, “You want to stop looking over your shoulder? This is how.”

“I need everything you have on the staff entrance,” I announce, without checking in with either Liam or Nick. “The timing, the shift rotations, uniform. How they handle new hires.”

Nick turns to look at me. It isn’t a sharp look. It’s worse than that. The long, searching kind, the one that goes somewhere I don’t always know how to meet. “Ivy.”

“I need this to be over,” I murmur. “You know that.”

I watch as he swallows whatever he was going to say. I turn to Liam, whose jaw is clenched tight enough to make the muscle jump in his cheek. “I know what I’m doing,” I insist.

“I know you do.” He doesn’t say it easily, but it sounds like he means it. That matters more.

Gabriel finishes his espresso and sets the cup aside before standing and buttoning his jacket. “I’ll send everything I have before the end of the day,” he promises. “Schedule, layout, personnel. Get in, get the footage, get out clean. If this goes the way it should, he’ll have no choice. Men like my father don’t fight battles they know they can’t survive.”

His men fall in around him without a word. In under a minute, the room holds only the three of us and the guards Liam brought along.

Nobody speaks right away. I look at the piece of paper still sitting in front of Liam and think about this so-called establishment in Milan. No doubt it’s a brothel of some sort, somewhere flesh is sold. All I can do is wonder what goes on in there that could be so damning to a powerful man.

“I want a team on the ground before we land,” Liam decides, looking at Nick. “Armed, mobile, no traceable connection to us. I want three extraction routes mapped in advance and eyes on the building for at least forty-eight hours before anyone goes near it.”

“Not my first rodeo,” Nick reminds him, already typing something into his phone.

“I want a safe house within ten minutes of the location.”

“That, I can take care of,” I announce. They both swivel to look at me. “I have a safe house in Milan. Work took me there often enough that it only made sense.”

“A safe house Vincenzo would know about,” Liam points out, and a shudder of revulsion runs through me. Of course. I never gave out the address, but Vincenzo would be aware of it. Thanks to the tracker.

“He wouldn’t think to watch that location,” I decide, and I mean it. “I have safe houses all over Europe, for one thing. For another, he won’t expect me to come back now that I’m in the States. I have resources there that will come in handy.”

Liam exchanges a look with Nick before sighing like he hates the idea but knows better than to think he can stop me. “Whatever you say.” He picks up the piece of paper and folds it again along the existing crease, then slides it into his jacket pocket.

We ride back to the penthouse in silence. The city looks the same as it did on the way over, but I watch it anyway, because it gives me something to do that isn’t thinking too hard about Milan or the expression on Nick’s face when he understood I fully intend on going in there.

When we get back to the penthouse, Aurora is in the living room, curled into the corner of the sofa with a book in her lap. She looks up when we come in, and whatever she sees on Liam’s face makes her close the book without marking her page. She’s good at reading him.