Page 94 of Forged

There’s a place on North State Street. Good food. I’ll text you the reservation details.

Me:

Sounds good. Excited to see you again.

I set my phone down and that’s when Snake Charmer finally responds.

Snake Charmer:Call tomorrow at 4 p.m.

Over the pasttwenty-four hours I’ve researched the Marchetti estate. Snake Charmer sent me the floor plans, but there’s one wing on the first floor that we can’t find any information on. I’m sitting at the desk in my office when the notification appears.

The room is quiet except for the muted noise of the city filtering through the windows behind me, but my attention stays fixed on the laptop in front of me where the encrypted call request flashes against the dark screen.

I let the notification sit there for a moment before I reach forward and accept the call. The screen flickers as the encrypted connection stabilizes, then resolves into the low-lit image of a woman seated in a generic white room.

Sera Corrigan looks exactly the way she always does on these calls—composed, observant, her dark hair pulled back loosely from her face while she looks into the camera with an intense focus.

“Gabriel,” she says.

“Sera.”

She tilts her head, studying me through the camera as if measuring something behind my eyes. The faint glow of monitors illuminates her face.

“You’re making progress?” she asks.

I nod. “I’ve been busy.”

A small smile touches the corner of her mouth, though there is no humor behind it.

“I imagine you have,” she replies. “The Marchetti family has always been difficult to approach. Even more so now that their internal structure has shifted with two new wives in the past few months.”

“I’ve made contact,” I tell her, bringing our focus back to the task at hand. “Trust is building.”

Her eyes sharpen slightly.

“With Lars?”

“With both of them.”

The silence that follows is brief but heavy. Sera leans back in her chair.

“That was faster than expected,” she says finally.

“The circumstances aligned.”

Another pause stretches between us before she asks the question that matters.

“And access to the estate?”

“Not yet.” I shake my head.

Her gaze doesn’t change, but I know she is cataloguing the answer, placing it somewhere within the larger picture she has been building for months.

“That will come,” she says. “Marchetti men are territorial, but they are also loyal to the people they trust. If you remain close to them, access will follow.”

“This situation is different than you described.”

Her brow lifts. “Explain.”