Page 78 of Veil of Smoke

They can watch all they want. I’ve got moves they don’t see coming yet.

I don’t sit at the bar again. I drift.

To a corner booth lit by nothing but the overhead glow of a busted red lamp. The table’s sticky. The cushion has a rip at the edge. It’s the kind of booth people forget you in. Exactly what I need.

The glass is already waiting.

Sweating on the table like it’s been there just long enough to look innocent. I didn’t order it.

The waitress left no name. Just a nod, and a slip of a smile. “Compliments of a friend.”

I stare at the drink. Whiskey. Amber. No ice. I used to drink it neat.

Back when I thought neat things stayed that way.

The jazz changes. A slide into darker brass, notes curling like a warning down my spine. The same song, but wrong now. Everything’s wrong now.

I keep my hands on the table, not near the glass.

A shadow glides into the booth across from me.

Rita.

Legs crossed, cigarette already between her fingers. Red lipstick, black coat, no preamble.

“You trust too easy these days,” she says, voice low and dry. Like the smoke she exhales before the words.

I don’t move. “You followed me?”

“No. I followed the man who left you that drink.”

My eyes flick to hers. Unblinking. “You see him?”

“Not anymore.” She nods toward the bar.

Marco’s gone.

So is the runner.

The booth turns colder than the whiskey.

I still don’t touch the glass.

“Don’t drink that,” she says, tapping her ash against the lip of her own glass. Not the poisoned one. Her own. “Unless you want your organs to shut down halfway through the brass solo.”

My fingers flex on the table. “How do you know?”

“I don’t,” she says. “But if you have to ask, it’s already not worth the risk.”

I lean back. Let it sink in.

I’d been watched walking in. Flanked while talking to Marco. And now, hunted by a ghost with a bottle.

Rita sees it in my face. The click of realization. The shift from suspicion to certainty.

She leans closer, her voice velvet and sharp.

“You were always going to be a problem, Dario. They just didn’t expect you to live long enough to become a threat.”

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