Page 10 of Taken By the Enforcer

My jaw tightens. Not the money. Never the money. She could steal every euro I touch and still owe me nothing. The problem is the idea buried inside the sentence—the small, brave belief that there is a world where she and I aren’t already inevitable.

I inhale once through my nose, tasting citrus from the bar still clinging to her hair. Bitter orange and sugar.Amara e dolce.That’s her. Soft where I want to worship, steel where I want to test.

The towel hits the chair. My gaze sweeps the room—door chain off, latch aligned, carpet fibers crushed in a trail from bed to desk to exit. The leather duffel I dumped on the armchair gone. I picture her small hands hesitating over the zipper, the way her breath must have hitched when she saw the cash. Smart girl. A new life costs, especially when you’re running from men who think they can buy everything back with blood.

I pocket the note. Then I move.

The hallway camera catches me before I make it to the elevators. Manager first. Money slides a lock open faster than keys.

Downstairs, the lobby’s marble gleams under chandeliers, the kind ofvecchia signorahotel where privacy is religion and staff pretend not to see sins if you tip them properly. I don’t bother with pretense. The night manager is pale when he clocks me coming.

“Signor Romano?—”

“Back office. Now.”

He scurries. I follow, long strides eating carpet, suit jacket thrown on over bare chest because speed matters more than decorum, and I’m fresh from the shower and still burning. In the cramped control room, four monitors show the doors, the hall, the elevator bank, and the street. I plant a hand on the console and lean over the shoulder of the kid at the controls.

“One hour back,” I say. “Guest floor twelve. Corridor B.”

The kid taps. We watch grainy footage roll in reverse—housekeeping carts, a bellman ferrying luggage, a couple arguing quietly in the language of rich people who hate each other. My room’s door swings open on screen, and there she is.

She pauses. Looks both ways like a little rabbit. Adjusts the burden strapped diagonally across her torso—the duffel riding high to keep from dragging. Wedding dress swallowed in the camera’s gray, a hand clutched to her chest like a shield.

My throat goes tight.

She moves left. Stops. Looks right. Head tips as if she can hear me even through time and pixels telling her to run. Then she walks fast, carefully, without turning back.

“Follow,” I order. The kid scrubs forward. Elevator doors open; she enters. Ground floor footage clicks on. She’s smaller here, dwarfed by marble and velvet ropes. She keeps her head down, slips behind a groupchecking in, then drifts toward the side exit like a ghost in tulle.

Street camera picks her up next: sun at her back, city alive around her, scooters darting, an old man closing his shop’s metal gate with a rattle. She lifts a hand to shield her eyes. Tulle snags on a wrought-iron bench and tears. She hesitates, bends as if to gather it, then leaves it. A bridal molting. She disappears into a narrow lane that kills the angle.

“Show me the lane,” I say.

The manager wrings his hands. “No city feed there, signore.”

“You have a rear service camera.”

His gaze flickers. I nod once at the kid; he flips to a dusty feed. There. Paolina again cuts across a loading bay, ducking beneath the lip of a truck ramp to avoid a porter lighting a cigarette.

Smart girl. She knows how not to be seen. That means she either watched a lot of men like me, or she learned fast today. Both feed the same hunger.

The screen goes blank at the alley mouth. No more angles.

“How long ago?” I ask.

The manager licks his lips. “Forty minutes. Perhaps forty-five.”

My fingers drum once against the console. She’s on foot, dress hindering. Even cut from the skirting, she wouldn’t clear more than a couple of yards before changing. Where would a woman go with cash, panic, and awedding dress she needs to shed? Not to family. Not toamiciwho report to fathers and fiancés. Somewhere anonymous first—bathroom in a café, thrift shop, cheap boutique where no one asks questions if bills are crisp.

I straighten. “Copy the footage,” I tell the kid. “USB. Now.”

He fumbles with the port. The manager asks if he should call the police. I laugh once. “No. You’ll call no one. You’ll also forget this conversation. Keep forgetting, and Santa Lucia smiles on you. Remember wrong, and I don’t.”

He believes me. People always do.

The bar sits three corners away. The same one whose door blew a sunbeam across the floorboards ocean when I first saw her drowning at a high stool. La Sirena is busier now that the worst heat has passed. Glass clicks on wood, men talk soccer and shipping schedules, and the bartender polishes a shining curve of counter with a white towel while clocking everything reflected in the big mirror.

He recognizes me and gets smart. “Buonasera,signore.”