Read Chapter 7: Zoe's Mark

The Lucky Seven sat at the bottom of a steep stairwell off the Boulevard de la Condamine, its neon sign buzzing like a trapped wasp. Zoe pushed through the door and the smell hit her first—spilled pastis, sweat, and the acrid tang of cheap cigars. The place was a leftover from another Monaco, one the casino preferred to pretend didn't exist. She pulled her hood lower and slid onto a stool at the far end of the bar.

Jean-Pierre Marceau was already there, nursing a glass of white wine that looked out of place in his meaty hand. He owned half the gambling debts in the old quarter, and his smile always arrived a beat too late, like a dubbed film.

"Zoe." He didn't look up. "You're late."

"Traffic." She slid a thick envelope across the sticky bar top. "Ten thousand. That clears the principal and last month's vig."

Marceau picked up the envelope, weighed it without opening it, and tucked it inside his jacket. "Your uncle's debt is settled. You're a fool for paying it, but a good one."

Zoe didn't argue. Family was the only debt that mattered, and the old man who'd raised her after her parents died wasn't going to spend his last years dodging collectors because she couldn't be careful with a hand of blackjack. That was the original sin that had pulled her into Alex's orbit anyway—a gambling problem she'd traded for a hacking one.

She was halfway to the door when Marceau's voice stopped her.

"Funny thing about your crew, though."

Zoe turned, keeping her face blank. "What crew?"

Marceau swirled his wine, studying the legs. "Word travels. Some heavy money's moving around town ahead of the Grand Prix. Racing teams, freight shipments, that sort of thing." He gave her a knowing look. "The kind of money that needs a settlement system to move it fast."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"Sure you don't." He set down his glass. "But there's a new client been asking about coverage in the harbor district. Wanted to know if my boys could run interference during the race weekend. Big-ticket item. Wants to make sure nothing goes wrong with a major transfer of funds."

Zoe felt ice run down her spine. She kept still. "Who's asking?"

Marceau watched her for a long moment. "Man showed up on a boat. Big yacht, the *Aurora*. Sounds like a Viktor kind of name."

*Viktor.*

Zoe's mind raced. Alex had been keeping Viktor close, using the vault plan as a mask. But Viktor was out here, in the underbelly of Monaco, betting against his own heist?

"What kind of transfer?" she asked, keeping her voice light. "High rollers moving chips around?"

"More like a contingency." Marceau leaned forward, dropping his voice. "He wasn't worried about the money moving *in*. He was worried about it moving *out*. Asked if my boys could make sure any secondary extraction from the casino grounds—say, someone leaving through the service tunnels with a data drive—would get... delayed."

Zoe's heart stumbled. The service tunnels. The escape route Alex had planned for after their incursion.

"Why would anyone want to delay someone leaving a casino with a data drive?" she said, playing dumb.

Marceau shrugged. "Insurance. He didn't say it, but he was betting the primary crew fails. And when they do, he wants to make sure the fallback player doesn't get out clean either." He paused. "You look pale, Zoe. Drink on me?"

"I'm fine." She was already moving toward the door. "Good doing business."

"Zoe." His voice sharpened just enough to stop her. "You should know. He wasn't the only one asking. There's a second player in the mix. No name I recognize, but they reached out to my cousin in Nice. Wanted to know about a man who visits a grave in the cemetery—the one on the hill. Said he leaves flowers. Paid handsomely for any photographs of the man's face."

Alex.

Somebody else was tracking Alex's movements. Someone who knew about the grave visits, who'd left that note on his brother's headstone. This wasn't just Viktor's double-cross anymore. There was a second game in play, and Alex was a piece on both boards.

"Thanks for the tip," Zoe said, and pushed out into the late afternoon heat.

---

She found Alex three hours later in the garage behind the port, perched on a crate while Jules welded a mockup of a doorframe. The air stank of metal shavings and ozone. Jules had rigged a quick-fire mechanism to test the jammer's range, and the small device sat humming at the center of a wire cage, its red light blinking steady.

"You picked a hell of a time to go shopping," Jules said without turning around.

Zoe pulled off her hood. "Settled my uncle's tab. Old news." She looked at Alex. "We need to talk."

Alex read her face in a second flat. He stood, gestured Jules to keep working, and led her to the far corner of the garage, where an old Citroën sat rusting under a tarp.

"Marceau told me something," she said quietly. "Viktor went to him with a job."

"Viktor hires a lot of people."

"This job was about delay tactics. Making sure anyone leaving the service tunnels after a heist gets slowed down. Even if they have what they came for." She watched his face. "He's betting against us, Alex."

Alex didn't flinch, but his jaw tightened almost imperceptibly. "I know."

"You *know*?"

"It's in his profile. He's got the helicopter extraction waiting on the roof, he's left the floor plans missing the laser grid, and he's been laying contingency after contingency. The man doesn't trust his own shadow." Alex's eyes were hard. "But I've been planning around his contingency for weeks. That's why we're going through the basement. That's why the ledger isn't in the vault. He thinks he's selling us to his own double-cross, but he's the one being played."

Zoe felt a surge of frustration. "There's something else. Marceau says there's a second player asking about you. The cemetery. Your brother's grave. This person knows your history—all of it."

Alex was quiet for a long moment. "The rose and the note."

"Whoever left that for you knows things even Viktor shouldn't know. If Viktor thinks he's the only one running this game, he's wrong. And if this second player knows about the ledger and the timing—"

"Then we have two enemies who might not know about each other." Alex nodded slowly. "Or they do know, and they're working together."

"Marceau said Viktor was making sure the fallback doesn't get out clean. What if the second player is the one who's supposed to clean up after Viktor?"

Alex considered this. "Then the ledger is the prize everyone's circling, and Viktor thinks it's in the vault while I know it's in security. But if this second player knows about the security office too—"

"They could be waiting for both of us," Zoe finished.

The garage fan whirred overhead. Jules's torch hissed in the background.

Alex pulled out his phone and opened a secure app. "I need you to trace the plate from that black sedan in the cemetery. Run it through the port authority manifests. If the driver came here by boat, there'll be a record."

"Already did." Zoe pulled out her own phone, thumbed to a file. "The car is registered to a shell company in Cyprus. But the shell company's registered agent holds accounts through one bank." She looked up. "The same Swiss bank Viktor uses for his personal holdings."

Alex's eyes narrowed. "So the second player and Viktor are connected. Financially, at least."

"Or the second *is* Viktor." Zoe shook her head. "But I've been cross-referencing the security footage gaps. Whoever left the trail to the ledger in the security office was inside the system for exactly ninety seconds—too short for anyone but me or one other person."

"Who?"

Zoe hesitated. "The casino's own head of IT. He resigned three weeks ago, no notice, no forwarding address. Last known position: Viktor's payroll."

Alex absorbed this in silence. Then he pulled out a pack of cigarettes, lit one, and stared at the smoke curling toward the ceiling.

"Viktor is betting against his own heist," he said slowly, "because he doesn't plan for it to happen at all. He's using it as cover to flush out whoever's after the same ledger—and whoever that is, they're willing to climb through my dead brother to get to it."

He met Zoe's eyes.

"Then we give them their heist. And we make sure they're in the room when it goes wrong."