Chapter 102 Getting Back

Chapter 102 Getting Back

Elena's Pov
They took me two blocks from the office.
A van.  The whole operation took under thirty seconds, which told me they had done it before. I had my phone in my hand when they grabbed me, I dropped it deliberately onto the pavement rather than letting them take it. It stayed there. That was something.

The van smelled like industrial cleaning fluid. My wrists were zip-tied in front rather than behind, which was their first mistake. I filed it away and said nothing about it.

I counted the drive. Nineteen minutes.

The building they brought me to was a warehouse on the eastern edge of the city. Two guards at the interior door. The room they put me in had a metal chair, no windows, and a single overhead light that buzzed slightly at the fixture.

Victor came in four minutes later.

He sat across from me with the same ease he had shown at the house and at the office. As if arriving in a room where someone was zip-tied to a chair was an ordinary professional occasion.

"This is not what I wanted," he said.

"Let me go," I said.

"When we have had a conversation."

"We had a conversation this morning." I held his gaze. "You offered me two million euros. I declined. The conversation was complete."

"This conversation is different." He leaned forward slightly. "Luca is going to move against me. After the listening devices, after the contractor situation. He is not going to be able to stop himself."

"You planted listening devices in his office," I said. "You earned the response."

"I need you to ask him not to act."

I looked at him. "You took me in a van to ask me to manage Luca's reaction to you."

"I took you to demonstrate a point," he said. "The point is that I can reach you whenever I choose. Which means I can reach him through you whenever I choose. I want him to understand that before he makes a decision he cannot walk back."

"He already understands that," I said. "It will not stop him."

"You could stop him."

"No," I said. "I could not. He makes his own decisions."

"He makes different decisions when you are involved," he said.

"Victor." I kept my voice flat. "You have made three moves against us in one week. The photographs. The planted routing irregularity. The listening devices, now this." I held his gaze.

"Each move told us something about you. This one tells me you are afraid of what he is going to do."

Something shifted behind his eyes. Something close to it.

He reached for the radio on his belt. "The zip ties," he said. "Those were unnecessary. I will tell the men."

"The zip ties were a mistake," I said. "Front binding instead of rear."

He looked at my wrists. Understanding arrived a second too late.

I had been working the tie against the metal arm of the chair for the first ten minutes of our conversation.
My wrists were raw. The tie was already broken, i had two minutes before the second guard's rotation brought him back through the interior door.

I moved before Victor finished reaching for the radio.

He caught my arm. I turned into the grip rather than pulling against it and used his own surprise against his balance. 

Within three seconds I had him between myself and the door at an angle that was uncomfortable for him and completely workable for me.

"I do not want to hurt you," I said.

"I can see that." He was breathing harder than before. "You have training I did not account for."

"Yes," I said. "Let go."

He released my arm.

I went through the interior door before the guard completed his rotation. The second guard was positioned exactly where the footstep sounds during my nineteen minutes in the room had told me he would be. I went past him in the corridor and through the main exit into daylight.

I walked four blocks at a steady pace before I flagged a car.

My wrists were bleeding where the zip tie had cut on the final break. My left arm had caught the doorframe at speed and would bruise through the week. My face was fine.

I called Luca from the car.

He answered before the first ring completed.

"I am out," I said. "I am in a car heading back. I am not seriously hurt."

The silence on his end lasted three seconds. Long enough to tell me exactly what the past hour had cost him.

"Where are you," he said.

I gave the street name. He told me Gio was already moving.

Gio met my car three blocks from the main location. He looked at my wrists. He did not comment on them. 

He handed me a first aid kit from the back seat and drove without asking for details.

Luca was in the corridor when I walked in. He looked at my wrists. Then my arm, then my face. Then my face again.

"Victor," I said.

"I know." His voice was controlled in the specific way that cost him more than the other versions. "Gio told me."

"He wanted me to ask you not to move against him," I said.

"He took you to deliver a message."

"Yes," I said. "He underestimated what front zip ties allow."

He looked at me for a long moment. Something was working through him that I recognized as the expensive kind of composed.

"Come inside," he said.

I followed him to the office. Sienna was at the table. She took the first aid kit from my hand without being asked and began working on the wrists while I talked.

"The listening devices," I said. "Have you pulled all three."

"Yes," Luca said. "Dr. Voss swept every room after the discovery."

"How much did they capture," I said.

"Enough to confirm Victor was listening to the capitalization discussions," he said. "He knows what the lawyer is building."

"He knows about Marcus Hale," Sienna said.

Luca reached into his jacket and placed three photographs on the desk. Me standing with Marcus outside the coffee shop. A second photograph from a different angle, A third I had not seen before. Marcus outside my apartment building, alone, timestamped four days before our meeting.

"He was watching you before you agreed to meet him," Luca said.

"That is not what you are implying," I said.

He looked at me. "What am I implying."

"That Marcus and I had a prior arrangement," I said. "That the meeting was not what I told you it was."

"Was it," he said.

The room changed quality. Sienna set the first aid kit down on the desk.

"Yes," I said. "It was exactly what I told you."

"He was outside your building four days before the meeting," Luca said.

"That is Victor's photograph," I said. "Victor had it when he was deciding how to approach me. 

He is showing it to you now to create exactly this conversation."

"I know what Victor is doing," Luca said.

"Then stop doing it for him," I said.

He looked at the photographs. Then at me.

"Are you still working with the FBI," he said.

Sienna put the kit down and walked out of the room.

I looked at Luca across the desk. He looked back. The question was in the air between us and neither of us moved for a long moment.

"No," I said. "I resigned. I handed in my badge. I refused Iris's reinstatement offer in front of my lawyer with everything recorded. I sat in this office and told you every word of it the same day it happened." I held his gaze. "You were there for all of it."

"Marcus was outside your building," he said.

"Victor photographed Marcus outside my building and sent it to you twenty-four hours after having me taken in a van," I said. 

"That is the full context of this photograph. That is the source of this information."

"I know the source," he said.

"Then use that knowledge," I said. "Victor wants you to doubt me. He has been building toward this since the café photographs.
He plants evidence. He creates pressure. He waits to see what it does to us." I held his gaze. "Do not give him the outcome he is waiting for."

"Elena," he said.

"Ask me what you actually want to ask," I said. "Not this version where you stand across the room with photographs. Ask me directly."