A month passed and Elite College became something that belonged to Aine rather than something she had been placed inside. She found her rhythm in it, the early mornings, the supplementary sessions, the particular satisfaction of a mind being properly used after weeks of having nothing to do but survive.
The days grew longer and Ravi, without making it a conversation, booked her a hotel close to campus. Not a hostel. A hotel, with security he had personally vetted, because a hostel meant variables he could not control and variables were not something he dealt in comfortably when it came to her.
"Are you not heading back?" he asked one evening, his voice coming through the phone with its usual directness. "It is nearly eight. After eight you cannot cross Route 13."
"I will go to the hotel tonight," Aine said. "It is fine."Then the rampage started.
It moved through the city like a current, sudden and without warning. People were being robbed, attacked, properties destroyed in a pattern that looked like chaos from the outside but had a very specific logic underneath it. Ravi explained it to her plainly when she asked. In the dark world it was a power move. You demonstrated your capacity for destruction and other mafiosos took note and invested in your gang accordingly. It was an audition conducted in other people's suffering.
Her phone rang.
"Aine." His voice was tighter than usual. "Where are you right now?"
"On my way to the hotel. I am sorry I could not leave earlier."
"Are you on the main street?"
"Yes. There are police everywhere."
"Be careful." A pause. "It is Jokull running the rampage."
She kept walking, her eyes moving across the street with the heightened attention of someone who had learned the hard way that danger did not always announce itself.
She stopped outside a shop.
Through the window she could see them. Fresh mangoes, bright and heavy on the display, exactly the kind Ravi preferred. She stood there for a moment doing the calculation quietly in her head.
If she went to the hotel first and sent them tomorrow they would not be fresh anymore. He liked them fresh. She could just go straight home instead, surprise him, have the mangoes waiting when he arrived.
She went inside and bought them.
Across the city two phones connected.
"Ravi." Jokull's voice carried something new in it, something that had been building since the road outside the park. "You are right that I can never be you or better than you. I will give you that much."
"Is that all?"
"You never said the whole mafia world could not be better than you." A pause. "I have been working on that. I have almost everyone on my side now."
"I noticed."
"Good. Because I am coming for you. Tomorrow it begins. You might want to watch your back."
"Have a wonderful time," Ravi said pleasantly. "You might want to watch yours."
He ended the call and turned.
"Hayland. Get the gold bars moved tonight."
"What about the warehouse under the chapel?"
"Leave it exactly as it is. I will use it as a decoy, let them think they have found something." He picked up his phone again. "Contact Ryan as well. We are relocating to Paris in one month."
"Understood."
Across town Jokull was already moving his own pieces.
"You brought her?" he asked, not looking up.
Kingsley nodded. "She is here. She can replicate the voice perfectly."
Jokull looked at the woman standing quietly at the edge of the room. A voice impersonator. Whatever he was planning for tomorrow, it required a voice that was not his own.
The call connected and a voice came through that stopped everything in the room.
"Please help me."
Ravi's expression did not change. "What is it?"
"I have been captured." The voice was hers. Every inflection, every texture, perfectly replicated. "I do not want to go to Jokull. Please—"
Jokull's voice replaced it immediately. "Bring me what I want, Ravi. You know what it is. Bring it and you get her back."
The line went dead.
Ravi set the phone down on the table and looked at it for a moment.
"They are being foolish again," he said. "Stay in the house and watch the gate. I am going to them."
Hayland looked at him carefully. "Are you taking the original documents?"
"I have my own way of handling this."
"At least take some men with you."
"They are needed on the ship. The goods cannot be left unguarded."
Hayland studied him from across the room. "You look remarkably relaxed for someone who is not going up against one mafioso tonight. You are going against a hundred of them."
"None of them are particularly clever," Ravi said, picking up his coat. "Keep your eyes on the gate." He paused at the door. "I have a strong feeling someone will be coming here tonight."
"Good luck," Hayland said.
Ravi walked out.
The gate swung open under Aine's hand and she stepped into the grounds.
Something was wrong immediately. She could feel it before she could name it, the particular quality of the silence, too complete, too deliberate, the house sitting in its own stillness like something holding its breath.
She called Hayland's name into the quiet.
Nothing.
She called Ravi's.
Nothing.
She stood in the entrance hall for a moment, her eyes moving across every visible surface, and then she made a decision that was so completely her it could not have belonged to anyone else. She went to the kitchen, set the mangoes on the counter and began making a fruit salad.
If something was happening she could not control it. But the mangoes were fresh and they would not stay that way and Ravi liked them fresh.
She picked up the knife and started cutting.
Earlier that evening Hayland had heard the cab before he saw it.
He was already moving toward the gate with his card when the vehicle came into view at the end of the driveway. He slowed, squinting at it through the dark. It could be Aine returning from school.
He never finished the thought.
The engine roared and the car accelerated directly toward him, closing the distance before he could do anything useful with his legs. The impact threw him and the car rolled over him and kept moving.
His phone skidded across the ground and cracked against the gatepost.