Chapter 25: TYPEFACE

Chapter 25: TYPEFACE
Steve didn’t even blink when I laid my phone in front of him. The photo from Mark sat there on the desk, glaring up in that perfect typewritten font that had been scratching at the back of my brain since the night of the rooftop dinner.

“It’s the same font,” I said. “Same as the card. You see that, right?”

He didn’t lean in. Didn’t study it. Just glanced once, then went back to whatever file he’d been reading. “Not new information.”

I stared at him like he’d just told me rain was wet and therefore not worth mentioning. “Not new information? Steve, it’s a match. That’s the kind of thing you... ”

“...already knew,” he cut in, smooth and flat. “This isn’t the first time it’s happened.”

That stopped me. “And you were going to mention that… when? After they started handwriting love letters too?”

He didn’t look up. “You don’t need to chase every shadow.”

It wasn’t what he said—it was the way he said it. Calm. Too calm. Like the match was obvious, expected, even boring to him. That kind of detachment either meant he had a plan… or he’d already decided something he wasn’t telling me.

And I hated that I couldn’t tell which.

Fine. If he wasn’t going to connect the dots out loud, I’d start making my own picture.

The rest of the morning I played the part of the quiet shadow, hovering at his side in meetings, scanning the room, catching Dante’s occasional look like he was clocking every thought I didn’t say. But my mind was already somewhere else. Company records. Threat patterns.

By the time Steve disappeared into a conference call that looked like it could run until the next century, I was in one of the side offices with my laptop, digging.

Freeman Technologies wasn’t small. We’re talking a digital fortress built on another digital fortress, with an actual army of NDAs circling it. But I’d worked my way into enough “protected” systems before to know that every fortress has a few side doors... if you know where to look and don’t mind getting creative with your search terms.

I started with the obvious: lists of current partners, investors, high-level employees. Then I pulled old lists. Ones from years ago, before my time, before even Dante’s. Names that had come and gone. Some dropped off quietly. Others? Not so much.

That’s when I found it.

A news brief buried in the archives from six years ago. Freeman Technologies had a merger—small company out of Chicago, specialized in encrypted storage solutions. Sounds dull. It wasn’t. Within months of the merger, there’d been a breach. Not a big one. Not public enough to make headlines beyond the tech world. But big enough internally that the Chicago division was dissolved and its top brass scattered like ants from a kicked nest.

No charges. No public scandal. But if you knew how to read between the lines of corporate PR? It smelled like rot.

I scrolled further. One of the names from that division popped up in another place, under “consulting services” for a man I now recognized as one of Steve’s former partners.

Former. As in, one of the first people targeted in the current string of threats.

I sat back, chewing on that. This wasn’t random. The people getting hit weren’t just “close to Steve” now—they were all, in some way, tied to that merger.

Coincidence? Maybe. But in my experience, coincidence was just the word people used when they didn’t want to admit they’d been asleep at the wheel.

I was still connecting the lines when Dante’s reflection appeared in the glass wall beside me. I didn’t jump. Not outwardly.

“Busy?” he asked, eyes flicking to my screen.

“Depends,” I said. “Are you here to tell me to stop looking at company history?”

“Would it work if I was?”

“No.”

He almost smiled. Almost. “Then no.”

I waited for him to walk away. He didn’t. He just stood there like he was measuring something in the air between us. I wasn’t about to fill the silence for him, so eventually he did. “If you’re looking for patterns, you’re going to find them. Just be sure you know what you’re looking at.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Some stories look different depending on who’s telling them.”

Cryptic, even for him. But before I could press, he was gone again, a ghost in a suit.

By late afternoon, Steve was out of his conference call and back to acting like nothing about the day was unusual. We left the office in his car, rode back to the penthouse without a word about my digging. He didn’t ask, and I didn’t offer.

The penthouse was its usual blend of sleek and intimidating, with just enough warmth in the lighting to trick you into thinking it might be home. I showered, changed into something that didn’t smell like corporate air-conditioning, and tried to lose myself in a book on the couch while Steve worked in his office.

It was almost midnight when I decided to call it. I headed for the guest suite they’d set up for me, big enough to be its own apartment, view of the skyline like a living painting. I pushed the door open, already reaching for the lamp.

And stopped.

The bed looked like it had been waiting for me... covers smooth, pillows perfectly placed. Except one of them wasn’t.

Right in the center of the top pillow, sitting like it had been posed there, was a single playing card.

Queen of Hearts.

Same crisp white stock. Same sharp edges. Same faint scent of something chemical, like the ink was still fresh.

I picked it up slowly, flipped it over.

No handwriting this time. No taunting sentence. Just the card itself, like the meaning was obvious. Like I was supposed to know what it meant without being told.

The problem was… I didn’t.

And that was worse.