Chapter 29 030

Chapter 29 030
Chapter Thirty
Xavier

Ares left at two.

He shook my hand at the door with the grip of a man communicating something he no longer had the leverage to say out loud, and I let him communicate it and said nothing, and Cato followed him out with the expression of someone mentally drafting a report he wasn't looking forward to writing.

The vehicles pulled out through the gate and Bruno closed it and stood watching through the iron bars until they were out of sight. Then he turned around with an expression I hadn't seen from him in years.

"That," he said, "was the most enjoyable meeting I have attended in my entire career."

Carmen was still at the table when I came back inside. She had both hands flat on the surface and was looking at the middle distance with the focused stillness of someone running back through a conversation and checking it for gaps. I sat across from her and waited.

"The daughter," she said. "Sorel. We need to find her."

I had been thinking the same thing. "Fabrizio is already on it. I sent him a message during the meeting."

She looked up. "During."

"When Ares was explaining pack cohesion for the second time. There was a window."

Something crossed her face that was close to a smile. "He's going to go back and regroup," she said. "He agreed to nothing specific. The border routes conversation was preliminary, he was feeling the edges of what we have. When he realizes how much Fabrizio actually has he'll either comply or escalate."

"Which do you think."

She considered it honestly. "Escalate first. Then comply. He needs to try something before he accepts that he can't." She paused. "Hannibal needs to know today. Before his father gets back and controls the narrative."

I was already reaching for my phone.

Hannibal answered on the first ring, which meant he had been waiting. I put it on the table between us and Carmen leaned forward slightly.

"It went as expected," I said. "He came with the reforms as his stated concern and switched to the border routes when Carmen introduced them."

A pause. "How did he take it."

"Badly and carefully," Carmen said. "He confirmed nothing and denied nothing. That's actually useful, a flat denial would have been a harder position to move him from."

Another pause, longer. "Carmen." Hannibal's voice was different when he said it, not the weight it used to carry but something else, something that had been cleaned out and rebuilt. "You were in the room."

"Yes."

"How was he with you."

"He tried to use my history. Xavier stopped him."

"I would have—" He stopped. "I'm sorry I wasn't there."

"You're exactly where you should be," she said. It was neither warm nor cold, just true. "He's going to come back to you with a version of this meeting that makes him look like he controlled it. Don't accept his framing."

"I know his framing," Hannibal said. "I've been living inside it for thirty years."

"Then you know how to dismantle it," she said.

Bruno, who had been leaning in the doorway, caught my eye and tilted his head toward the kitchen in the way that meant he was going to make coffee and I should join him and give them a moment. I followed him out.

In the kitchen Bruno poured two cups and handed me one and said nothing for a full minute, which from Bruno was either respect or the buildup to something significant.

"Sorel," he said.

"Yes."

"If she left because of what her father did to a human pack member and she finds out her father has been facilitating a trafficking network through Blood Moon territory—"

"She becomes a witness," I said. "A credible one. An Alpha's daughter with direct knowledge of his character and methods."

"The king would have to act."

"The king would have no choice." I drank my coffee. "Fabrizio needs to find her before Ares realizes we're looking."

"How long do we have."

"Ares will take two days to debrief, another day to consult the old guard, another to decide on his next move. Four days minimum before he starts thinking about loose ends." I looked at the wall. "Fabrizio has four days."

"I'll tell him three," Bruno said.

Carmen appeared in the kitchen doorway. She looked lighter than she had this morning, not relieved exactly, more like someone who had been carrying a specific weight to a specific place and had set it down.

"He's alright," she said. "Hannibal. He sounds like himself."

"He's been finding himself since he got back," Bruno said. "Takes time."

She came and took the coffee cup I held out before she asked for it, which was a small thing and also not a small thing, and stood at the counter and looked out the window at the afternoon.

"Ares called me trouble," she said. "When I was a child. Even as a child, he said." She turned the cup in her hands. "I've been thinking about that. Whether it was an insult."

"It wasn't," I said.

"No," she agreed. "I don't think it was either." She drank. "What happens if he escalates before Fabrizio finds Sorel."

"Then we deal with what escalates."

"Specifically."

"He has two options. He goes to the king first with his version of the border route situation, which is a risk because he can't know exactly what we have, or he moves on the routes directly, closes them himself, and presents it as his own initiative."

"He won't go to the king," she said. "He supported the faction that tried to overthrow him. He has no standing there."

"Which leaves the routes."

"Which leaves the routes," she said. "And if he closes them himself we've achieved the primary objective regardless of what he does next." She set her cup down. "It's not the worst outcome."

"No," I said. "It isn't."

Bruno looked between us with the expression he had been wearing more frequently lately, the one he had never fully explained and didn't need to.

"I'm going to call Fabrizio," he said, and left.

Carmen turned from the window and looked at me and the afternoon light was doing something particular to the room and the bond was warm and steady between us and Ares was two hours down the road running calculations that were already behind.

"Tonight," she said, "I want something ordinary. Dinner, the fire, nothing strategic."

"Done," I said.

"And I want to play," she said. "Just for the room. Not for any reason."

"I'll tell Rosaria."

She nodded and looked back out the window and I stood beside her and watched the afternoon move across the yard and thought about a girl who had been called trouble since childhood finally standing in a room where that was exactly the right thing to be.