Dante.
The glass of whiskey is cool against my palm. The ice chinks softly, the only sound in my penthouse apartment that overlooks the sprawling campus of Moretti University. Down there, they are students. They worry about exams, about parties, about legacies carved into stone. Up here, I worry about empires.
My purpose here is not academic. Moretti University is a breeding ground, and the Aegis Society is its most promising specimen. A network of future leaders, judges, and titans of industry, all bound by shared secrets and a sense of entitlement. My father sees an asset to be absorbed. A tool for the Moretti family. My job is to assess its strength, find its weaknesses, and determine the cost of acquisition.
It was supposed to be a simple, sterile evaluation.
Then she happened.
Lia. Just Lia.
I close my eyes, and the escape room materializes behind my lids. Not the chaos, the shouting, the fumbling of children playing a game. I see her. A phantom drifting through the noise. Her movements were economical, precise. She never touched a puzzle, yet she solved every single one.
I saw her eyes track the pattern of wear on the floorboards. I saw her register the publication dates on the spines of the books. I saw her notice the single discolored harpsichord key from across the room.
She absorbed the entire schematic in minutes. A feat of observation my father’s own intelligence officers would respect.
And then she did nothing.
She played the part of a frightened mouse, cornered by a housecat like Julian Vance. She let him sneer. She let him posture. She gave him the illusion of power, all while holding the key to the entire room in her mind.
That wasn’t caution. It was control. The kind of control that takes years of brutal training to perfect.
I saw the moment she found the final answer. It wasn’t a flash of insight. It was a simple confirmation of a theory. Julian’s ego was the lock. His phone was the key. She saw it, processed it, and then, with the subtle grace of a master puppeteer, she gifted the victory to an insignificant pledge.
She didn’t want the win. She wanted to remain invisible.
My phone buzzes on the polished surface of the bar. I glance at the screen. Marco. Perfect timing.
I answer, putting it on speaker.
“You’re supposed to be enjoying university life, cousin,” his voice comes through, laced with its usual dry humor.
“The social experiment continues,” I say, swirling the amber liquid in my glass. “I have a new file for you.”
“Another one? The Aegis profiles are already thick enough to stop a bullet.”
“This isn’t about Aegis. Not directly. This is a person of interest.”
A pause. Marco knows my work. I don’t deal in persons of interest. I deal in assets and threats.
“Name?” he asks, his tone shifting, all business now.
“Lia. She doesn’t use a last name. Scholarship student. Fine arts program.”
I can almost hear him frown through the phone. “An art student. Dante, is this personal?”
“Strictly professional,” I lie, and the word tastes like ash. “She was at the Aegis recruitment challenge today. She solved a room designed to stump legacy kids in under an hour without leaving a single fingerprint.”
Silence from his end. He’s processing. He understands the implication.
“She made no overt moves,” I continue. “She observed, she analyzed, and she manipulated another student into taking the credit. It was a flawless piece of misdirection.”
“So she’s intelligent,” Marco says, though he knows it’s more than that.
“She’s disciplined,” I correct him. “There is a difference. Julian Vance tried to provoke her. He backed her into a corner and insulted her. For a moment, I saw something in her eyes.”
I remember it clearly. The meekness fell away for a split second. It wasn’t fear. It wasn’t anger. It was assessment. The cold, clear look of a predator calculating the distance to its prey’s throat.
“What did you see?” Marco presses.
“Fire,” I say, the word feeling inadequate. “She looked at him like he was a nuisance she could erase. Then the mask was back in place.”
“Who does she work for?” he asks. It’s the same question echoing in my own mind.
“That’s what you’re going to find out. The official records are useless. Her scholarship is from some anonymous international arts fund. It’s a ghost. I want to know who is behind the curtain. I want to know who trained her.”
“You think she’s an operative? From another family?”
“I think no art student moves the way she does. She’s a professional. But there’s no signature. No affiliation I recognize. She’s either the best I’ve ever seen, or something entirely new.”
“I’ll start with the fund. Trace the money. It always leads somewhere.”
“Be discreet, Marco. She’s clearly operating under deep cover. If she senses we’re looking, she’ll vanish.”
“Of course. Anything else?”
I hesitate. “Yes. Keep this file between us. My father doesn’t need to know. Not yet. He sees the Aegis acquisition as a simple corporate takeover. I won’t introduce a new, unknown variable until I understand what it is.”
“An unknown variable,” Marco repeats slowly. “You sound intrigued, Dante.”
“I’m cautious,” I counter. “Someone has placed a queen on a board full of pawns. I want to know who the player is before they make their next move.”
“I’ll have something for you in forty eight hours.”
“Good.”
I end the call and the silence of the apartment returns, heavier than before. I walk to the floor to ceiling windows, looking down at the lights of the campus. A board full of pawns. And one queen, hiding in plain sight, pretending to be the most fragile piece in the game.
She is a distraction. A dangerous one. My focus should be on Julian, on the society’s alumni, on the structure of their network. But all the strategic lines I draw in my head are disrupted by the image of her. Her quiet defiance. The charcoal smudge on her cheek. The unnerving intelligence in her eyes.
She is not an asset. She is not yet a threat. She is a question. And I have never been able to leave a question unanswered.
I take a sip of the whiskey. It burns on the way down, a welcome fire. Who are you, Lia? What game are you really playing here at Moretti?
Because I was wrong. She isn’t playing the same game as everyone else.
She’s playing a different one altogether. And I’m starting to think I’m her only opponent.
