Chapter 2 - THE SECOND STITCH“How many?”
Luca Moretti’s question landed harder than a threat.
I looked down at the jacket spread across the fitting table.
The tracker sat beside it like a black coin from hell.
“I don’t know yet.”
Luca’s expression didn’t change, but the room tightened around him.
“Find out.”
Bastion Vera made a strangled noise. “Mr. Moretti, surely we should let your security team—”
“No.”
One word.
Bastion went silent.
Luca nodded toward me.
“She found what none of you did.”
His silver-haired adviser stepped forward for the first time. “Luca, we should consider that possibility itself suspicious.”
His voice was calm and educated, but there was iron underneath.
Luca glanced at him.
The adviser continued. “A seamstress happens to notice a device that bypassed our sweeps? Convenient.”
Every eye turned toward me.
I felt my stomach drop.
Vivien recovered immediately.
“Yes,” she said softly. “Exactly.”
She crossed her arms, her diamonds glinting.
“How do we know she didn’t put it there?”
Bastion seized the idea like a drowning man grabbing rope.
“She did have access to the suit.”
“I had access to the trousers,” I snapped. “Not the jacket.”
“You work in my atelier.”
“In the alterations room three floors down.”
Vivien took a graceful step closer to Luca.
“Darling, think about this. She appears out of nowhere, creates a panic, then conveniently discovers a sophisticated tracker.”
I wanted to laugh.
Instead, I stared at her.
“Your left thumbnail is bleeding.”
Vivien froze.
Everyone looked at her hand.
A microscopic nick marked the edge of her manicured thumb.
She immediately curled her fingers inward.
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“Probably nothing.”
I picked up the jacket.
“But somebody worked with a very fine needle recently.”
Her eyes flashed.
Bastion blurted, “That’s absurd!”
Luca didn’t respond.
I began checking the jacket systematically.
Collar.
Shoulders.
Lapels.
Sleeve heads.
Interior pocket edges.
My fingers moved over the wool, feeling for differences in density.
Cloth talks.
That sounds ridiculous to people who don’t sew.
But it does.
Fabric remembers tension.
It remembers where needles pierced it.
It remembers heat.
It remembers hands.
Near the lower right interior pocket, I felt something wrong.
“Here.”
The nearest guard leaned forward.
I turned the jacket toward the light.
Along the seam ran five black stitches.
Four were nearly identical.
One was slightly too short.
I cut it.
A thin metallic strip slid free.
The silver-haired adviser’s eyes narrowed.
“What is that?”
I didn’t touch it.
Luca’s security man did.
He wore gloves now.
After studying it, he looked up.
“Passive RFID repeater.”
“What does that mean?” I asked.
“It clones proximity access credentials.”
My blood went cold.
Luca’s gaze sharpened.
“Meaning?”
The guard swallowed.
“If Mr. Moretti walked near a secured door wearing this jacket, someone outside could potentially capture the signal from his access card.”
“Which doors?”
“Depends which card he carried.”
The adviser answered.
“Home. Office. Private elevator. Armory.”
A silence followed.
Vivien whispered, “Oh my God.”
She sounded perfect.
Too perfect.
I looked at her again.
Luca noticed.
“What?”
“I don’t believe her.”
Vivien spun toward me.
“You insolent little—”
“Why?” Luca asked.
He wasn’t asking her.
He was asking me.
I put the scissors down.
“Because she keeps being frightened at the right moments.”
No one spoke.
I continued.
“The tracker falls out—she’s shocked.”
I pointed to the repeater.
“This comes out—she’s horrified.”
Vivien’s face hardened.
“What exactly should I be? Amused?”
“No.”
I met her eyes.
“But genuine fear doesn’t wait for an explanation.”
Her lips parted.
I turned back to Luca.
“She didn’t react until your guard identified what it did.”
The adviser studied Vivien.
Bastion looked like he might faint.
Vivien’s voice dropped.
“You are trying to destroy my wedding.”
“No.”
I looked at the jacket.
“Someone else is.”
A guard’s radio crackled.
Static.
Then a man’s voice.
“Mr. Moretti, we have a security concern downstairs.”
Luca didn’t look away from me.
“Define concern.”
“Your driver is missing.”
That changed him.
Not visibly to most people.
But I saw the shift.
His shoulders became still.
His breathing slowed.
Predators don’t always tense before attacking.
Sometimes they relax.
“When?”
“Last contact was twenty-three minutes ago.”
“Car?”
“Still in garage.”
“Phone?”
“Found beneath the vehicle.”
Luca turned to his adviser.
“Gideon.”
So that was the silver-haired man’s name.
Gideon was already reaching for his phone.
“Lock the building.”
“It’s locked,” Luca said.
“Then lock the block.”
Vivien stared at him.
“Luca, you can’t imprison half of Manhattan because your driver stepped away.”
Luca finally looked at her.
“My driver has been with me for fourteen years.”
His voice was quiet.
“He does not step away.”
A pounding hit the fitting-room doors.
Everyone drew weapons except me.
“Mr. Moretti!”
One of the outside guards.
“Open it.”
The door cracked.
A young security officer stumbled inside.
Blood soaked the front of his shirt.
He collapsed.
Chaos exploded.
A bodyguard caught him before his head hit the marble.
“Where are you hit?”
The guard gasped.
“Not mine.”
Luca’s face changed.
“Whose?”
The young man looked toward Luca.
“Rafael.”
The missing driver.
Vivien covered her mouth.
Bastion whispered a prayer.
The guard continued.
“He was in the service stairwell.”
“Alive?”
Barely.
“Get medical up here.”
As men moved, I noticed something on the guard’s cuff.
A fiber.
Bright blue.
Not wool.
Synthetic.
I stepped closer.
“Don’t touch him,” one guard snapped.
“I’m not.”
I pointed.
“There.”
Luca saw it.
Gideon used gloved fingers to pull the fiber free.
“Recognize it?” Luca asked me.
“I recognize the weave.”
Bastion suddenly looked ill again.
I looked straight at him.
“It’s from our garment bags.”
Everyone turned.
Bastion shook his head.
“No.”
I continued.
“Bastion Atelier uses custom cobalt-blue nylon bags for private fittings.”
Luca’s stare became lethal.
“Who has them?”
“All our senior staff.”
Bastion’s voice cracked.
“And delivery teams.”
“How many delivery teams?”
“Three.”
My heart began pounding.
Because I suddenly remembered something.
“This morning,” I said.
Luca looked at me.
“What?”
“A garment bag was missing.”
Bastion snapped, “We lose garment bags constantly!”
“No, we don’t.”
He stared at me.
I stared back.
“You screamed at Carlo last month because he misplaced one.”
Bastion’s face drained.
Luca stepped down from the platform.
His shirt sleeves were rolled now.
Without the jacket, he looked less like a groom.
More like the man people whispered about.
“Carlo.”
Bastion swallowed.
“My assistant cutter.”
“Where is he?”
“At the atelier.”
“Call him.”
Bastion fumbled with his phone.
No answer.
Again.
No answer.
Again.
Voicemail.
Luca’s gaze turned colder.
“Address.”
Bastion gave it.
Gideon dispatched men.
Then Luca looked at me.
“Anything else?”
I hesitated.
“Yes.”
Vivien groaned.
“Oh, for God’s sake.”
I ignored her.
“The jacket isn’t the only piece altered after final press.”
Bastion stiffened.
I walked to where Luca’s waistcoat hung.
The buttons looked ordinary.
Hand-covered silk.
But one sat differently.
Half a millimeter too high.
I touched it.
“Scissors.”
This time a guard handed me his knife instead.
I cut the thread.
The button came free.
Inside the fabric-covered shell was a pinhead camera.
For the first time since I’d met him, Luca Moretti looked truly angry.
Not loud.
Not explosive.
His eyes simply became empty.
Vivien whispered, “That’s impossible.”
Luca turned toward her.
“You keep saying that.”
She took a step back.
He took one forward.
“Yet impossible things keep falling out of my wedding clothes.”
“Luca…”
“Your family recommended Bastion.”
Bastion whimpered.
Vivien’s eyes flicked toward him.
Again.
Too quickly.
Luca saw it.
“Gideon.”
The adviser moved beside him.
“Separate them.”
Two guards seized Bastion.
Vivien screamed.
“Don’t touch me!”
No one touched her.
Not yet.
Luca pointed toward a side room.
“Vivien goes there.”
“You’re locking me up?”
“I’m protecting you.”
“From what?”
Luca’s gaze settled on her bleeding thumbnail.
“From giving me a reason not to.”
She went pale.
Then the building lights went out.
Pitch black.
Someone screamed.
A gunshot exploded.
Glass shattered.
I dropped behind the table.
Two more shots.
Men shouted.
Emergency lights flashed red.
I saw movement.
A figure near the curtain.
Then someone grabbed my wrist.
I twisted, raising my scissors—
“Ward.”
Luca.
He dragged me behind the marble platform as another bullet punched through the mirror.
His body covered mine.
“Stay down.”
A muzzle flashed across the room.
Luca fired once.
A body fell.
The emergency lights steadied.
The attacker wore building maintenance coveralls.
One of Luca’s guards kicked away his weapon.
“He’s alive.”
Luca stood.
“Keep him that way.”
Then we heard Vivien scream from the side room.
The guards ran.
Door locked.
They broke it open.
Empty.
Window closed.
No exit.
But on the floor lay a cobalt-blue garment bag.
And inside it was Bastion’s assistant cutter, Carlo.
Dead.
Pinned to his chest with a sewing needle was a note.
Luca read it first.
His eyes moved once across the words.
Then he handed it to Gideon.
I saw the message.
THE WEDDING IS TOMORROW. WEAR THE SUIT. OR THE NEXT BODY IS THE SEAMSTRESS.
My breath stopped.
Luca looked at me.
The room had become frighteningly quiet.
“They know who you are,” he said.
I stared at the corpse.
“No.”
My voice sounded far away.
“They know what I noticed.”
Luca shook his head.
“No, Miss Ward.”
His expression turned hard.
“They knew you would notice it.”
And for the first time that night, I understood something worse than the tracker.
May you like
I hadn’t stumbled into the conspiracy.
Someone had placed me directly in its path.
