Page 2 of The Broker

“Isn’t it obvious? I’m your security.”

I give him a derisive glance, irritation bubbling up inside me. “Don’t you have anything better to do? You should get a hobby. I hear knitting is good for the nerves.” I rest my gaze on his strong hands and neatly manicured nails. “Are you even capable of getting your hands dirty anymore?”

Ignoring my taunting, he calmly changes gear. “Let’s hope we don’t have to find out.”

Fifteen minutes later, we park the car out of sight and arrive at the farmhouse on foot. The place looks deserted. It rained last night, and only one set of car tracks is in the mud—the caretaker’s, leaving for lunch.

There is nobody here, but my heart still races. I am all too aware that I have a nine-year-old daughter, Angelica, and her only two blood relatives are about to walk into enemy territory. If something were to happen to us. . .

If you don’t want Dante to see you as a victim, don’t act like one.

I take a deep breath and then another. Dante pretends he doesn’t see my fear, a kindness I wasn’t expecting. “Shall we?” he asks, putting on his earpiece and opening his door.

“Yes.” I get out of the car, and the two of us walk to the entrance, Dante a half-step in front of me. The sturdy wooden door is locked, but he picks it in under a minute. I must look reluctantly impressed because he holds out his hands, his lips curling into a smug smile. “Looks like they’re good for some things.”

So self-satisfied. I ignore him and launch a drone in the air. It’s programed to fly in concentric circles around its launch spot and transmit live camera footage back to headquarters. “Leo, can you see the drone feed?”

It takes him a moment to respond. “Yes, I have eyes now.”

“Good.” I let myself relax a little. We still don’t have cameras inside the farmhouse, but at least we’ll know if anyone approaches the perimeter.

Dante turns the handle and pushes the door open. “Let’s go.”

We walk quickly through the farmhouse. The interior looks exactly like I’d expect from the outside. The curtains are faded; the couch is threadbare. The floor is bare, covered with a thin layer of dust. The kitchen sink houses dirty dishes, and the refrigerator looks like it’s even older than Dante’s precious Ferrari.

Everything looks exactly like it should until we come to the cellar door. The cellar door that’s shut and locked with a Yale lock that needs a ten-digit code to open.

Crap.

Dante looks at the lock and then at me. “Can you get in?”

“In seven hours,” I mutter. Brute-force hacking a ten-digit numeric code. . . We don’t have enough time for that. I plug my codebreaker into the port and pull my laptop out of my backpack.

Dante folds his arms across his chest, his bulging biceps straining his sleeves. “Valentina, I hate to point out the obvious, but we don’t have seven hours.”

With heroic effort, I resist the urge to strangle him. “Shockingly, I know that.” Salvatore Verratti is not computer savvy; he’s unlikely to pick ten random digits. I look up his birthday—January 12, 1979—and type 01121979 into the codebreaker. That’s eight of the ten digits. Most people pick easy-to-remember passwords. With any luck, the Bergamo head is one of them.

The birthday doesn’t work, but the next date I try, the date Verratti got married, is a hit. Who’d have thought he was a romantic? Three minutes after I started, the lock clicks open. I resist giving Dante a smug grin and get to my feet. “Shall we?”

A gun appears in Dante’s hand. “I’ll go first,” he says. “Wait here until I give the all-clear. If you hear me shout out, don’t follow me.” He holds my gaze in his. “Do you understand, Valentina? If I’m in trouble, get the hell out. That’s an order.”

I snap to attention. “Yes, sir,” I say, giving him a mocking salute. “Whatever you say, sir. Or,” I pull a small drone out, no bigger than the palm of my hand. “I could just send a camera in.”

He gives me a speaking look. “So that’s where the budget goes,” he murmurs, cracking the cellar door open.

I send the drone swooping in, my eyes on my phone screen. “Nobody in sight,” I say after a moment.

He steps in front of me, his solid body shielding me from imaginary harm. “Stay behind me.”

“As you wish,” I mutter with another roll of my eyes. Dante is technically my boss, but the master-of-the-universe act gets pretty old. I lift my chin in the air, step around him, and take the stairs down into the cellar.

The cellar is empty except for a desk in the middle of the room. On it is the server. I take one look at it and swear out loud.

“Problem?”

“It’s ancient.”

That’s not the only problem. Leo’s voice isn’t in my ear either—the cellar is a dead zone. I try not to feel spooked as I boot up the computer. It takes forever before I can navigate the settings, and I swear again. “There’s no built-in Wi-Fi.” I look at the back. “No USB port either.”