Little Italy wore the night differently than the rest of Toronto.

Downtown’s glass towers gleamed cold and modern after dark, all steel, reflection, and sleepless ambition. Little Italy, by contrast, felt older—warmer in some ways, but heavier too. The neighborhood held onto its age with stubborn pride. Brick buildings stood shoulder to shoulder beneath the wash of amber streetlamps, their upper windows dark or dimly lit, their ground floors a patchwork of shuttered cafés, bakeries, grocers, and family-run businesses that had long since closed for the night. Faded signs in Italian still clung to storefronts. Fire escapes cut black ladders across the walls. Somewhere in the distance, a church bell marked the hour with solemn indifference.

At this time of night, the neighborhood had gone quiet, but not empty.

There were still late smokers outside bars, the occasional couple lingering too long beneath streetlights, the low murmur of traffic farther off, and the ever-present city hum that never fully died. But beneath that surface calm was something older and more watchful. Little Italy did not sleep so much as close one eye and keep the other half-open.

The Vixen rolled into that silence like a predator slipping into another predator’s territory.

Vulpes kept the bike’s profile low and her speed measured as she entered the neighborhood, the machine’s sleek red-and-black bodywork catching glints of sodium light as she passed beneath the lamps. Her HUD tracked Leo’s signal with patient precision, the small pulsing blip guiding her deeper into streets lined with brick, wrought iron, and inherited loyalties. The air carried the mingled scents of stale tobacco, distant espresso, wet pavement, and the faint ghost of garlic and tomato from kitchens long since closed.

Then she saw it.

Little Italy Leaf & Lounge.

In all fairness, it was exactly what she expected.

The place looked respectable in the way certain criminal institutions always did—aged into legitimacy by time, money, and the public’s willingness not to look too closely. It was a dark-brick building with narrow windows, the sort of structure that looked as though it had stood there so long it had grown roots beneath the street. The front was understated but deliberate: polished glass, tasteful gold lettering, old-world charm curated just enough to signal class rather than flash. If you didn’t know better, it looked like the sort of place that catered to retired lawyers, aging businessmen, and old men who still believed cigars were a personality.

If you did know better, it looked exactly like what it was.

A place where men met behind closed doors and called criminal conspiracy tradition.

Vulpes guided the Vixen into a narrow alley a short distance away and killed the engine. The sudden quiet settled around her at once. She swung off the bike in one smooth motion and engaged the locking system John had built into it. With a muted mechanical clunk, the wheel clamps locked tight, turning the Vixen from a nimble escape machine into several hundred pounds of dead, stubborn weight for any prospective thief unlucky enough to think hotwiring it was a good idea.

She rested one gloved hand briefly on the seat, then looked across the street toward her target.

Dark brick. Minimal clean plans. No useful municipal updates. Too many renovations layered over too many decades. John had found her fragments, not certainty. Enough to tell her where the doors were and roughly how the bones sat beneath the skin, but not enough to promise what waited inside.

She would be going in blind.

Not ideal.

Still, it could have been worse. John had the external security elements under watch—traffic cams, nearby feeds, whatever building-adjacent systems he could quietly pry open from the Den. He could not tell her what the inside looked like, but he could keep the edges of the board from surprising her too badly.

Vulpes stood very still, letting her eyes travel over the building one level at a time.

Front entrance. Upper windows. Side access. Rooftop line. Blind corners. Weathered masonry. Decorative ironwork. A place built in another era, modified in pieces, and likely trusted by its owners more because it was old than because it was safe.

That, at least, was a weakness she understood.

Old places had habits.

Old men had even more.

And tonight, if Leo Ruso had crawled into this nest to lick his wounds and move product, she intended to find out exactly how deep the roots of the place went.

She considered her options, eyes traveling up the brick façade, and the roof felt like the most natural answer. Front doors were for invited guests, side doors for staff and muscle. Roofs were for foxes, thieves, and women raised on the old lessons of cat burglary. Her grandfather had taught her the craft the way some people taught their children hockey—young, often, and with almost cultural reverence. Balance, patience, silence, timing. How to read drainpipes, ledges, cornices, window frames, and the habits of buildings that had stood longer than the people trying to protect them.

From the mouth of the alley, she studied the structure the way another woman might study a witness on the stand. Little Italy Leaf & Lounge had age in its bones. The brickwork was solid but weathered, the mortar uneven in places, the decorative stone trim giving her just enough to work with. A wrought-iron fire escape clung to the neighboring building, not quite touching the lounge itself but close enough to matter. An old gutter line ran along the side wall, reinforced decades ago and probably repaired half a dozen times since. Not ideal for a normal climber.

More than good enough for her.

She stepped deeper into the alley, checked once more that the Vixen was secured, then rolled her shoulders and flexed her gloved hands. The city noise dulled around her as focus narrowed everything down to distance, height, grip, and rhythm. She slipped a compact line gun from her belt, aimed it upward, and fired.

The line hissed softly through the dark and caught fast on a lip of stone near the roofline.

Vulpes gave it one sharp testing pull.

Solid.

Good.

Then she moved.

She went up the line with smooth, economical precision, boots finding brief purchase against brick while her arms and core did the real work. She did not scramble. She climbed the way her grandfather had taught her to do everything—without wasted motion, without panic, without ever looking like she was trying too hard. Halfway up, she shifted her weight, caught the edge of a narrow ledge with one hand, and used it to swing herself toward the gutter line. The metal gave a faint protest under her weight, but not enough to worry her.

Above, the roof seemed closer now, its black edge cutting across the night sky.

She climbed the last stretch by hand, fingers slipping into old seams in the masonry, boots braced against jutting brick and decorative trim until at last one hand found the coping at the top. She hung there for a heartbeat, listening.

Nothing immediate. No shout. No footsteps rushing to investigate. Just the low hum of the city, the distant throb of traffic, and somewhere below, the muffled life of the lounge continuing behind its respectable little face.

With one final controlled pull, she lifted herself over the edge and rolled onto the roof in a silent, practiced motion.

Flat tar and gravel greeted her, still holding a little of the day’s warmth. She stayed low automatically, one knee down, one hand to the surface, head lifting just enough to sweep the rooftop. Vents. Chimneys. One squat utility housing. No visible lookouts. No obvious alarms. But old mob places were rarely stupid enough to leave their secrets in plain sight.

She moved in a crouch across the roof, each step measured, every shift of weight deliberate. Somewhere in the back of her mind she could almost hear Reggie Penrose’s dry voice correcting her posture, reminding her that a good burglar never simply arrived on a roof.

A good burglar arrived already reading it.

The rooftop access door was steel, painted over more than once, with a lock that looked newer than the frame around it. Interesting. Nearby, a narrow skylight sat half-hidden behind a raised lip of roofing, too grimy to see through properly from a distance.

Vulpes paused between them, yellow lenses narrowing behind the mask.

Two possible ways in.

The door was cleaner, faster, more obvious.

The skylight was riskier, quieter, and much more her style.

She briefly weighed her options, then crossed to the roof access door. Up close, it was as solid as it had looked from a distance—thick frame, reinforced hinges, and a newer deadbolt set into it with all the subtlety of men who trusted brute force more than elegance. She gave the door a small nod, less in approval than acknowledgment. It was not impossible.

Just inconvenient.

From her belt she drew a palm-sized disk of soft plastique and pressed it carefully against the door near the locking mechanism. A second device followed—compact, electronic, and shaped to nest cleanly into the pliable surface. She thumbed it into place with practiced pressure, arming the improvised breaching charge and then leaving it dormant.

That was for later.

Insurance.

If things went loud, she wanted an exit or diversion already waiting for her.

With that done, she turned her attention to the skylight.

That had been her real entry plan all along.

She crossed to it in a crouch, boots whispering over tar and gravel, then knelt beside the frame. The glass was old but not antique, reinforced enough to keep out weather and the merely curious, not enough to stop someone like her. She ran gloved fingers along the edge, checking for tension wires, contact alarms, vibration sensors, or any sign that someone had modernized the obvious point of entry.

Nothing.

Interesting.

Either the Rusos trusted the height and obscurity of the roof, or they trusted the men below to make the roof irrelevant. Both were common criminal mistakes.

From her utility belt she drew a compact glass-cutting tool and set its small suction guide against the pane. The cutter gave a faint mechanical whir as its scoring wheel bit into the surface. Vulpes moved slowly, drawing a careful oval near one corner rather than taking the whole center. Cleaner. Easier to manage. Less chance of shifting weight, cracking the pane, or dropping a fatal shower of glass into the room below.

The wheel whispered around the outline, patient and precise.

When the cut was complete, she set the tool aside and attached a pair of small suction tabs to the free section. She tested it once, gently. The glass gave with a soft, almost polite release. She lifted the piece free a fraction at a time, cradling it against her body so it would not scrape the frame. Then she lowered it onto the roof beside her with all the care of a jeweler setting down something expensive.

No alarm.

No shout from below.

Good.

She leaned over the opening and let her yellow lenses adjust to the darkness beneath. A narrow drop into a room below—clear enough. No movement. No immediate heat signatures suggesting a guard posted under the skylight. She took one more second to map the landing in her head, then hooked a compact line to the frame and slipped through feet first.

She descended in perfect silence.

One hand on the line, one braced lightly against the frame, she lowered herself until her boots found the top of a dark wooden cabinet or decorative divider just below the opening. From there she eased down the last stretch and dropped soundlessly to the floor, knees bending to absorb the impact, one hand already touching down for balance.

The lounge she had entered was dark and empty.

Her yellow lenses widened and compensated for the low light, resolving the room into shape and texture in a matter of seconds. It was exactly what an old-money gentleman’s smoking lounge should have been, if one ignored the criminal undertones humming beneath it. Leather chairs. Low polished tables. Heavy carpets meant to muffle footsteps and suggest taste. Dark wood paneling gleamed dully in the gloom, and the air still carried the stale, expensive ghost of cigars, tobacco leaf, old whiskey, and men who liked to perform respectability for one another. 

A brass ash stand waited beside a chair like a servant with nowhere left to go. Cut-glass decanters stood in a locked cabinet against one wall. Framed black-and-white photographs—old Toronto, old men, old pride—hung in measured arrangement. Everything about the place spoke of tradition, privacy, and exclusivity. The kind of room where powerful men liked to pretend they were preserving culture when they were really just conspiring in comfort.

Vulpes stayed still for a heartbeat, letting the room tell her what it could.

No voices nearby.

No creak of occupied leather.

No sudden movement from hidden corners.

Just the low electrical hum of a building that slept with one eye open, and somewhere beyond the walls, the faint murmur of life deeper inside.

She had made it in.

Now came the harder part.

She eased the lounge door open just far enough to peer into the hall beyond, then tapped the side of her mask and turned the hearing amplifiers up a notch. The world sharpened at once. The building’s quiet was no longer quiet at all. She could hear the hum of hidden wiring in the walls, the faint tick of old pipes cooling somewhere overhead, the distant murmur of low male voices deeper in the building—and, closer, the soft rhythm of footfalls coming down the corridor.

Guards.

She heard them before their flashlights gave them away.

Vulpes slipped back from the doorway and flattened herself against the wall beside it, body turned sideways to narrow her silhouette. A marble bust of Caesar stood on a pedestal nearby, all Roman arrogance and imperial chin, and she used it the way a thief used anything useful—without sentiment. She folded herself into the angle between the pedestal and the dark wood paneling, letting pale stone and heavy shadow break up her outline.

A second later, white beams lanced through the dark hall.

The flashlights stabbed back and forth in practiced sweeps, bright enough to dazzle a lesser set of optics. John’s upgrade compensated instantly, the lenses dimming and recalibrating before the glare could blind her. The beams slid across framed paintings, old molding, brass trim, and polished floorboards, then passed close enough to Caesar’s blank marble face to throw its nose and brow into hard relief.

Vulpes did not move.

Two men, from the sound and spacing of them. Heavy shoes. Measured pace. Not police. Not military either. House muscle. Private-room security. Men used to patrolling a place they believed belonged to them.

Their footsteps came closer.

“One more sweep and I’m done,” one muttered, his voice low and irritated. “Leo’s got everybody jumpy tonight.”

“Yeah?” the other said. “Well, he gets dragged out of a wreck and loses a witness, I’d be jumpy too.”

Their beams crossed again, one passing over the lounge doorway she had just used, the other skimming the base of the pedestal. Vulpes held her breath for half a heartbeat, then let it out silently through her nose.

The guards kept coming.

She could hear the faint rasp of fabric against holsters now, the tiny click of a ring against a flashlight barrel, the shift of weight as one of them slowed to look more carefully down the corridor. Not enough to see her. Just enough to make the moment dangerous.

“Thought I heard something up here,” the first man said.

“You hear things every time the lights are low.”

“No, I’m telling you—”

He stopped.

One beam drifted back toward Caesar, then lower, then to the lounge door.

Vulpes’ fingers slid soundlessly to her belt.

If he took three more steps, she would have to put him down.

Two steps.

The flashlight lifted again, lingering for an extra second on the lounge entrance.

Then the other guard snorted. “You want to explain to Leo why you’re spooked by antiques and cigars, go ahead. I’m not.”

A pause.

Then, at last, the beam moved on.

The two men continued down the hall, light sweeping ahead of them, footsteps receding by careful degrees. Vulpes stayed exactly where she was until their backs were to her and their voices had faded enough to be swallowed by distance.

Only then did she peel herself from the wall.

She leaned out just enough to watch them go, yellow lenses narrowing behind the mask. The corridor stretched beyond them in dark polished lines—thick carpets, framed photographs, carved wood, and the kind of hush money liked to wrap around itself.

Now she knew three things.

The place was awake.

Leo had rattled the nest badly enough to increase patrols.

And somewhere deeper in the building, men were talking low because they believed the walls were on their side.

Vulpes glanced once at the retreating guards, then the opposite way down the corridor.

Then she slipped out from Caesar’s shadow to continue the hunt.

“...and now Carmine wants to have words with me because some dumb bitch in a fox suit fucked up what should have been a clean operation!”

Leo’s voice carried up the hall from a room farther down, loud enough to bleed through wood and plaster despite the building’s thick old bones. Vulpes knew that voice well enough by now—greasy with self-importance on a good day, sharper and uglier when fear got its claws into him. Tonight it was both angry and frayed, the bluster of a man trying very hard not to sound as rattled as he actually was.

She stilled at once, every other thought dropping away.

There.

That was her room.

She moved down the corridor in a low, silent glide, keeping to the darkest side of the hall where the weak spill of decorative sconces left more shadow than light. The old carpet helped, thick enough to swallow her footfalls, and the dark wood paneling along the walls gave her plenty of breaks in silhouette if anyone rounded a corner unexpectedly. As she drew nearer, Leo’s voice sharpened again, rising and falling with the panicked rhythm of a man talking himself into the illusion of control. 

If Carmine Ruso wanted words with him, Leo was already in trouble.

If he was lucky, he was just getting chewed out.

If he was unlucky, Carmine would start wondering whether Leo was becoming more trouble than he was worth.

That thought almost made her smile.

Almost.

She stopped just short of the doorway, flattening herself beside it with practiced precision. The wood was old, the trim heavy, and a narrow frosted pane sat high in the upper portion of the door—too clouded to show her much, but not enough to stop sound. She angled her head, letting the hearing amplifiers do the rest.

Inside, a second voice spoke—lower, calmer, the kind of voice that usually belonged to someone who thought they were safer than they really were.

“You lost the witness, Leo. Carmine’s not mad because it went bad. He’s mad because it went bad sloppily.”

Leo snarled something half-muffled, pacing if the scrape of shoes and restless weight shifts were anything to go by.

“Sloppy?” he hissed. “You think I planned on her dropping out of the dark like some goddamn circus ghost? Four men down in under a minute, smoke, gas, the whole fucking act—then she’s on the car, then McAllister’s gone, and now I’m the asshole explaining to Carmine why one accountant is in RCMP hands and not feeding fish.”

Vulpes listened, still as stone.

Inside, glass clicked softly—someone setting down a tumbler, maybe whiskey. Leo was not alone, then. Good. Better to hear him talking to someone he thought was on his side.

The calmer voice returned.

“And the chemicals?”

A beat.

Then Leo again, angrier now because the question mattered.

“Moved. Secured. That part held.”

Vulpes’ focus sharpened.

There it was.

Not the whole answer, but a live wire all the same.

“Secured where?” the other man asked.

“Need-to-know.”

A chair creaked.

“Leo, if Carmine’s asking me to clean up after you, then I need to know.”

Another silence, shorter this time, more dangerous. When Leo answered, he sounded like a man swallowing pride one jagged mouthful at a time.

“I don’t have the full address. Not the final one.” He spat the words out like they offended him. “I handed off to a broker node. Old arrangement. Ruso product, third-party staging, nobody in the family holding the hot stuff longer than necessary.”

Vulpes’ brow tightened behind the mask.

Smart.

Annoying, but smart.

So the chemicals had not gone directly from the Rusos to Psychedelic—or to whoever wanted them. They had passed through an intermediary layer. A buffer. A deniable handoff.

Inside the room, the second man exhaled slowly.

“Who’s holding them?”

Leo hesitated.

That told her the name mattered.

Then—

“Eh, that pretty boy whose club is under our protection.” He paused, then said, “You know the one in the Entertainment District.”

Vulpes went very still.

Not Psychedelic.

Not yet.

But that description had exactly the wrong kind of shape to it.

Inside the room, Leo made a disgusted sound.

“Devon Monroe,” he spat, like the name itself offended him. “Mr. Adonis.”

The other man let out a low, humorless laugh.

“Jesus. Him?”

Leo kept going, because angry men always did.

“Yeah, him. Pretty face, perfect suit, his own reflection probably gets valentines from the bastard. But his club’s useful. Adonis moves product through the kind of crowd that doesn’t ask questions if the high is expensive enough and the room is full of beautiful people pretending they’re immortal.”

Now they were getting somewhere.

Devon Monroe.

Mr. Adonis.

Owner of The Adonis.

Not just a club operator, then. A node. A broker of vice wrapped in velvet rope and vanity. Exactly the kind of nightlife prince who could take unusual chemicals and feed them into a curated market of thrill-chasing elites, status addicts, and rich predators looking for something stronger, rarer, stranger. A man like that could connect mob channels to half the city without ever dirtying his own hands. And from what Coraline knew, he had built an entire little empire around beauty, access, and social control.

Inside, Leo’s voice sharpened further.

“He’s supposed to break the shipment up, feed it through his own channels, and keep family fingerprints off the whole thing. Private rooms, VIP lists, influencer trash, trust-fund psychos, all those dead-eyed little peacocks who think danger tastes better if it comes in crystal glassware.”

The other man was quiet for a second, then asked, “And Carmine knows all that?”

“Carmine knows enough.”

Which meant not everything.

Vulpes shifted her weight a fraction, mind already moving ahead. Devon Monroe was not the end of the trail, but he was a real target. Actionable. Immediate. And if The Adonis had become a transfer point for psycho-reactive compounds, then the club was more than a den of curated decadence—it was a doorway into a larger chain.

She had what she needed.

That was enough.

For one brief, ugly moment she considered staying—slipping into the room, bloodying Leo’s nose, maybe leaving him with a split lip and another humiliation to explain to Carmine. The image had a certain appeal. But appeal and wisdom were rarely the same thing.

Leo was already in trouble with the Don. She did not need to heap anything else on him tonight.

More importantly, it was better that she got out without anyone ever knowing she had been there at all. If they realized the information had leaked—if Leo or anyone around him so much as suspected Vulpes had overheard that conversation—then any follow-up at The Adonis would be pointless. Devon Monroe would be warned, the trail would close, and whatever chemicals the Rusos had passed along would vanish deeper into the city’s bloodstream.

No.

Tonight was not for theatrics.

Tonight was for discipline.

Vulpes eased back from the door with the same careful precision that had gotten her this far, giving the room one last look she did not need in order to remember. Leo inside. Angry. Frightened. Loud enough to be useful. Devon Monroe. The Adonis. Entertainment District. A protected club, a polished front, and now a live thread in the chain.

That was the prize.

She turned silently and began retracing her route down the corridor, keeping to the dark side of the hall where wood paneling, heavy shadows, and expensive carpet all worked in her favor. Every movement was measured. No hurry. No wasted motion. Her grandfather had taught her that the difference between a skilled burglar and a dead one was often the ability to leave as gracefully as they entered.

She passed the bust of Caesar once more, the old emperor staring blankly into the dim hall as if approving of conspiracies conducted in silence. The patrol guards were farther off now, their footsteps and low voices dulled by distance and walls. Good. Let them keep hunting phantoms in the wrong direction.

She slipped back into the gentlemen’s lounge and eased the door shut behind her with exquisite care. The room was still dark, still empty, still carrying the stale perfume of cigar smoke and moneyed vice. For a moment she stood completely still, listening.

Nothing.

Then she crossed to the skylight.

The line was where she had left it. The cut pane still rested safely on the rooftop beyond. She climbed with smooth economy, one hand on the frame, one boot braced lightly against the wall, lifting herself back through the opening without so much as a scrape. Once on the roof, she replaced the glass section with patient care, settling it so neatly that only a close inspection would reveal it had ever been moved.

Then she crossed to the roof access door and paused beside the dormant breaching charge.

A temptation.

A backup she no longer needed.

With one small motion, she plucked the electronic trigger free, peeled the plastique disk from the steel, and folded both away into separate compartments on her belt.

No evidence. No gifts. No calling card.

By the time she reached the roof’s edge, Little Italy had returned to looking almost peaceful below her—amber streetlights, sleeping brick, and old businesses pretending history had washed the blood from their foundations.

It hadn’t.

It never did.

She dropped to the adjacent ledge, descended by line and gutter with the same fluid precision that had brought her up, and landed in the alley beside the Vixen without a sound. The bike waited where she had left it, dark and patient, more beast than machine in the low light.

Vulpes unlocked the wheel clamps, swung into the saddle, and brought up her HUD with a tap to the side of her helmet.

The Adonis.

Entertainment District.

Devon Monroe.

She let the names settle in her mind like pieces on a board.

Not Psychedelic.

Not yet.

But this was how real investigations worked. Not in straight lines, but in chains, side doors, and carefully hidden bridges between one predator and the next. Tonight she had not caught the quarry she feared most.

She had found the next gatekeeper.

As the Vixen purred softly back to life beneath her, Vulpes allowed herself one small, private smile.

The fox had gone in blind.

She was leaving with a trail.