Page 63 of Enemies in Ruin

The laptop is in a different category, clearly.

“What about it?”

“It’s not the laptop itself,” Luca says, dipping his chin to his chest. “It’s the secrets it holds.”

“Ah.” Moving past him, I sit down on the closed toilet lid, which somehow escaped destruction. “What’s on it?” I pause, raising an eyebrow. “Or can you even tell me?”

Luca turns around and leans against the sink, crossing his arms over his chest. “Well, the good thing is unless they have a guy who knows computers…nothing. I’m pretty good at using proxies and firewalls and such to hide things.”

“But?” There’s abutthere. I can hear it.

Uncrossing his arms, he brings up both hands behind his head to rub wearily at his shoulders. “But, if they do have such a person, everything is on that laptop.”

I don’t need him to tell me what everything is. I can imagine it. Records of his racketeering. The timeline of the development of the Pits. His theories on the development of the Pits, including who’s involved. His income. How he distributes gains.

“Everything.”

He nods, a single clipped tip of his chin.

I look at him narrowly. When I speak, I pitch my voice low, conscious of the cops in the other room. “You need to be straight with me, Luca. This is more than just ‘you scratch my back, I scratch yours, and we all keep each other happy,’ now, isn’t it?” He doesn’t respond, and that’s all the confirmation I need. “Jesus H. Christ, Luca! What the hell are you into, exactly?” He opens his mouth, but no sound comes forth. “Let me guess. You’re feeding the cops information about the Pits?”

His hand comes down across my mouth, cutting off the words.

“That’s enough, Carina. Don’t say anything else.”

I nod slowly, and he moves his hand. I’m right, and therefore he’s right. It’s information that would be incredibly dangerous in the wrong hands. With that information in the wrong hands, Luca’s no good to anyone as an Untouchable. What he knows is common knowledge. He has no leverage anymore.

I stare at Luca, unable to comprehend that he would keep data like that in such an easily accessible location. “You just had it sitting out?”

He slants a look at me. “No, I didn’t just have it sitting out, Carina. It was locked up in my safe.”

“Not good enough, obviously.” I stand up, too agitated to continue sitting. “How could you be so stupid to keep something like that around, anyway?”

“Gee, thanks.”

“No, Luca, this is serious! Do you know what they will do—”

He grabs me around the waist and pulls me into him where he leans against the vanity. “Shh. That’s enough. I’ll fix it.”

My voice is muffled by his shirt when I answer. “I’m worried, Luca.”

His arms tighten around me, and his fingers scratch reassuringly at my scalp. “I know. It’s not the first time it’s happened, though, and it won’t be the last. We used to keep that kind of thing on paper. Digital lock-keying is actually a step up from how my father runs things. This will be a good test of our security.”

The detective appears in the doorway of the bathroom, and Luca straightens, subtly pushing me behind him. His expression hardens and blanks imperceptibly in the presence of another person. I can’t help the feeling of warmth that spreads through me at the awareness that I’ll never be one of those people he goes neutral with ever again. “May I help you?”

“Sorry to interrupt, sir.”

“It’s fine. Did the department have anything to do with this?”

“What? No.” The detective steps back, shaking his head emphatically. “You know better than that, Luca. We don’t mess with you; you don’t mess with us.”

“Pretty strange for someone to make it past both our men, don’t you think?”

“I don’t know how the hell that happened, except that the doorman was shot. We’re pulling the footage on it.” His gaze travels the confines of the bathroom, touching on me for a moment before settling on Luca. “I’d like to speak frankly.”

“So, fucking speak.”

Astonishment has my jaw hanging for a second before I close my mouth. I know what an Untouchable is, of course, but my experience up to this point has been pure theory. This is power in action. No one in my family has ever had this kind of sway over the law.

---