Amelia placed one finger beneath the coded name at the top of the hidden strip.
Dominic Russo stood beside her, the paper held between his hands.
Across the table, Constantine’s face had lost every trace of amusement.
The shift was so sudden that the entire Sapphire Dining Room seemed to tighten around it.
“What is it?” Dominic repeated.
Amelia studied the cramped symbols.
Unlike the sweeping marks in the journal, these had been written quickly.
The ink pressure varied.
Several letters had been reduced to prison abbreviations, while the numbers were disguised as dates from an old Corsican religious calendar.
She knew what the first coded name meant.
Dominic.
The second line contained a route designation.
The third gave a time.
Amelia swallowed.
“It is an instruction,” she said.
Constantine shoved back his chair.
“She is guessing.”
Gabriel moved before the chair stopped scraping.
He stepped into Constantine’s path, broad shoulders blocking the door.
Dominic did not raise his voice.
“Sit down.”
Constantine remained standing.
Silas reached beneath his jacket—not drawing the concealed weapon, only making it clear that the choice was available.
Constantine sat.
Dominic turned to Amelia.
“Read it exactly.”
She looked at the strip again.
“The first line identifies you by rank rather than name,” she said.
“The closest translation is ‘the newly crowned heir.’ The second line says the eastern shipment is to be redirected before it reaches Russo control.”
Arthur leaned closer, his glasses nearly touching the paper.
“Those symbols could mean storage, not redirection.”
“They could,” Amelia said, “if this mark were open at the bottom.
It is closed.
In this cipher, that changes the word from ‘hold’ to ‘divert.’”
Arthur stared at it.
Dominic’s eyes remained on Amelia.
“Continue.”
She wished she could return to the corner, pick up the pitcher, and become invisible again.
But Constantine was watching her now with a cold calculation that felt more dangerous than anger.
“The shipment is supposed to enter through the route described in the journal,” she said.
“But this strip orders the drivers to abandon that route and move the cargo to a secondary location.”
“Where?” Dominic asked.
“The location is encoded as a saint’s name and a prison number.
I need the journal to match it.”
Dominic placed the strip beside the open pages.
Amelia turned back to page nine.
The symbols repeated in the margins beside a list of shell-company transfers.
She traced the pattern silently, matching the saint’s name with a sequence that appeared four times.
“Valarious,” she said.
Constantine’s expression hardened.
Dominic glanced at him.
“Your logistics company.”
“It is a warehouse designation,” Constantine replied.
“Nothing more.”
Amelia shook her head before she could stop herself.
Dominic noticed.
