Chapter 71: Directives

RISSA'S POV

The fox shifter on his knees in front of me is younger than I expected. Maybe nineteen. His hands are bound behind him with silver-threaded rope, and his eyes are too big, too wet, too human even though right now he's mostly fur and panic.

"Please," he says. "Please, I have a sister. She doesn't know where I am. She'll come looking—"

"She won't find you," I say. "That's rather the point of all this."

I roll my eyes. I'm tired of these pathetic shifters begging me even after I have told them that I don't care.

"I'll do anything. I'll work for you. I don't have to be—" His voice cracks. "You don't have to take it all. Just leave me enough to survive on. Please, Mrs. James."

I crouch down so we're eye level. It's a courtesy I don't often extend.

"Here's what I need you to understand," I say. "This isn't personal. I'm not angry with you. I don't even know your name, and I don't want to. But I have buyers in three different territories who are expecting product by Friday, and you, unfortunately, are the product."

"I'm not product, I'm a person—"

Who cares? I need his soul for my fox protection serum. I don't care if he has ten kids or hundred grandkids.

"You're both," I say, standing back up, brushing off my knees. "Take him to processing. Gently. We don't damage the goods before extraction."

Two of my men haul him up by the arms. He's still talking, still begging, voice rising into something that isn't words anymore, just sound, animal and desperate, and I let it wash over me the way I let rain wash over a car window. Something to be waited out. Nothing that touches the inside.

Dahlia, my assistant, is waiting by the door with a tablet in her hands and that particular pinch between her eyebrows that means the numbers aren't where I want them.

"Talk to me," I say, walking past her toward the war room.

"The goblin exchange went through clean. Full payment, no complications, buyer's already asking about a second batch next month."

"Good. Tell him yes, and tell him the price goes up eight percent for the second batch. He'll pay it."

"He will." She taps something into the tablet. "Faerie shipment is delayed. The route through the lower fold collapsed—we lost contact with the handlers for six hours. They resurfaced, but two of the containment units are compromised."

"Compromised how?"

"One faerie got loose. She didn't get far, but she got far enough to attract attention. We had to relocate the entire operation to the secondary site."

I stop walking. "How much attention?"

"Enough that I'd recommend we pause faerie shipments for two weeks. Let it go quiet."

"We don't have two weeks, Dahlia. We have buyers who don't understand the word patience and I have an election in ten weeks."

That gets her to look up from the tablet.

"You're really doing it," she says. "The mayor thing."

"The mayor thing," I repeat, and I can't help the small, satisfied curl of my mouth. "Filing's already done. Campaign manager starts Monday. Community outreach, environmental initiatives, a very moving speech about protecting vulnerable populations in this city."

Dahlia's mouth twitches like she wants to laugh and knows better than to let it show. "Protecting vulnerable populations."

"It polls extremely well," I say. "People love a woman who cares."

"And the shipments?"

"Continue exactly as they are, except now with better cover. A sitting mayor's approval on rezoning the docklands opens up four new routes we don't currently have. A mayor's office has resources. Security clearance. Access to systems that would take us years to infiltrate otherwise." I start walking again. "This isn't a distraction from the business, Dahlia. It's the next phase of it."

"And if someone connects the dots? Between the campaign and the—" she lowers her voice even though we're alone, "—the other thing?"

"No one connects dots that aren't there to be connected. We are a logistics and import company with strong local ties and a passion for civic improvement. That is all anyone will ever find, because that is all I will ever let them find."

We reach the war room and I pull up the shipment board on the wall screen — routes glowing in soft color-coded threads across three territories. Green for clean, yellow for delayed, red for compromised. Too much yellow tonight. One thread of red pulsing where the faerie route used to be steady green.

"Reroute the faerie shipment through the northern corridor," I say. "Slower, but nobody's watching it yet."

"That corridor runs close to the school camp."

I go still.

"How close?"

"Twelve miles, give or take."

Twelve miles from where my sons are. Twelve miles from where that elf girl is currently wrapped around three boys who belong to me, whether she understands that yet or not.

"Do it anyway," I say. "Twelve miles is nothing. And frankly—" I let the thought finish itself before I say it out loud, because some thoughts deserve a moment before they become words, "—it might be useful, having product moving that close to her."

Dahlia doesn't ask what I mean. She's smart enough not to.

"Goblin route stays as is. Fox shipment—" I glance toward the hallway, where the boy's voice has finally gone quiet, "—fox shipment ships Thursday, ahead of schedule. I want it gone before the buyer starts asking questions I don't want to answer."

"And the campaign schedule? You have the environmental coalition breakfast tomorrow at eight."

"I know my own schedule, Dahlia."

"I know you do. I'm just making sure the woman running for mayor and the woman running four black-market supply chains are reading off the same calendar."

I almost smile at that. Almost.

"They're the same woman," I say. "She's just better at some things than others let her be."

My phone buzzes against the table. A message, no name attached, only a string of numbers that means it came through the private line — the one reserved for exactly three people, and none of them should be texting me right now.

I open it. It's a message, giving me the feedback I needed on that Elf girl's sister, Elena.

\[She's not as alone as you think. The sister has someone. You'll want to see this.\]

Attached is a single photograph.

I don't recognize the man in it. But I recognize the look on Elena's face standing next to him — the soft, unguarded look of someone who thinks she's safe.

I set the phone down very carefully.

'Someone is about to be betrayed...' I laugh.

"Dahlia," I say. "Cancel my nine o'clock. I need to make a call."