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CHAPTER THREE

Lea

I drag the red string from Nico Varela’s club, Purgatorio, a name dripping with ironic salvation, to the zoning commissioner’s name, pinning it to my living room wall. Click . Another from the commissioner to three property acquisitions that sailed through approval despite neighborhood protests. The pin sinks into the plasterboard. A third connects those properties to shell companies. Thwack .

“Got you,” I say to the empty apartment, stepping back to survey my work. Or maybe I’m saying it to the man whose image stares back from a dozen grainy surveillance photos tacked between the documents. My personal devil, enshrined on plasterboard.

My once-normal living room has morphed into what my mother would call a “conspiracy cave,” laying Nico Varela’s invisible empire bare on my wall. News clippings, property records, corporate filings, and my own frantic notes are all connected by a web of colored strings. Red for confirmed connections. Yellow for suspected. Blue for the agonizing gaps, the questions still unanswered.

There are far too many blue strings. And too many pictures of him. That sharp jawline, those eyes that promise nothing good, a mouth that looks like it could ruin you with a word or a kiss. I trace the outline of his face in one photo, my finger hesitating over his lips before I snatch it back, disgusted with myself. Focus, Song. He’s the target, the monster who maybe…probably…had your father killed. He’s not a fixation. But the lie feels hollow, brittle. He is a fixation. Has been for six long years.

I rub my eyes, which feel like they’ve been scrubbed with sandpaper. Three days. Since Harrison dropped that file in my lap, I’ve been lost in this research fugue, surfacing only for bathroom breaks and to accept food deliveries I barely taste. My laptop screen glows accusingly from the coffee table, surrounded by empty coffee cups and half-eaten containers of takeout.

The record of my latest failed attempt to reach him still displays on the screen: Dear Mr. Varela, I’m reaching out regarding a profile piece for the Chicago Investigative Journal focusing on your business success and community impact.

Polite. Professional. Utterly ignored, just like the five previous messages I’ve sent to various official channels since getting the assignment. He’s playing with me. He knew my name. He knew I had the file. He’s letting me dangle, enjoying my frustration. The bastard.

“Damn it,” I mutter, collapsing onto my couch. A caffeine-withdrawal headache hammers behind my eyes, and my spine feels fused into a painful hunch. I need a shower, actual food, and twelve hours of uninterrupted sleep. Maybe an exorcism to get his face out of my head.

What I need more is a breakthrough. Something concrete linking him not just to shady deals, but to the suspicious brake failure that sent my father’s car into the river six years ago, just months after the Journal let him go for digging too deep.

Harrison’s deadline looms. I’m four days away from having to present my first report, and so far I have jack shit. “Get me something substantial,” he’d growled when I checked in yesterday. “Not just public records. I need an angle, Song. Something with teeth.”

Something with teeth. I glance back at my wall of connections, my eyes snagging again on a close-up of Varela. Those eyes. Sienna wasn’t wrong; they look right through you, even in a photograph. The patterns are there, tantalizingly clear: he’s built a legitimate empire that serves as a perfect shield for whatever lies beneath. His public persona as a successful businessman, philanthropist, and neutral mediator is immaculate. No arrests, not even a parking ticket. But the gaps in the public record speak volumes, dark spaces where money and influence flow unseen. Spaces big enough to hide a murder.

My phone buzzes, startling me. It’s lying face down on the coffee table, the vibration making it skitter. A text from Sienna: Checking you’re still alive. Blink twice if Varela’s goons have you tied up in a basement.

Despite my exhaustion, a small smile touches my lips. Sienna’s humor and grounded cynicism have been the only things keeping me sane since she appeared at my desk that first day, my designated guardian angel in this descent into hell. I text back: Still breathing. Drowning in research. No goons yet, just Varela’s ghost.

Her response comes immediately: Give it time. Staying late at the office finishing a piece. I’m swinging by after with reinforcements (Korean food it’s a summons. A display of power. I see you. I know how to reach you. Come.

My fingers tremble as they hover over the keyboard. The smart response, the safe response, is to suggest a public place, and demand professional boundaries. Safety. Caution.

What would Dad have done?

He would have walked straight into the fire, notebook in hand.

Before doubt can take root, before the fear can paralyze me, I type my response: I’ll be there.

The reply is instantaneous, a digital echo of command: Come alone.

Two words. A blatant disregard for safety protocols. A test. A dare.

Instead of alarm bells, a perverse thrill shoots through me, sharp and undeniable, raising goosebumps despite the fear coiling in my gut. This is it. The abyss Harrison mentioned. The chance to look into the eyes of the man behind the myth, the man who might hold the answers about my father, the man who’s already invaded my life without ever properly meeting me.

I set my phone down, looking back at my wall. Each string, each document, feels like a weapon I’m forging for tomorrow night.

Nico Varela thinks he’s summoning me to his domain, establishing dominance. He doesn’t realize I’ve been preparing for this moment for six years, obsessed, consumed.

Tomorrow night, I will meet the devil. And I will be ready.