“He will never give up the firm,” Lucía said, her breath hot against my cheek.

“He will,” I said. “He has no other choice.”

I positioned the cursor over the send button.

I clicked it.

The progress bar appeared, slowly filling with blue.

Outside, the Barcelona rain beat against the glass pane of the kitchen window.

The smell of wet asphalt and old drains drifted up from the street below.

“What do we do now?” Lucía asked.

“We watch,” I said.

I opened a separate browser tab and entered a custom IP address.

Matthew had installed a hidden camera in the smoke detector of Alvaro’s private office in Madrid three months ago.

The feed took five seconds to load.

The screen resolved into a wide, high-definition view of the mahogany-paneled room.

Alvaro was standing near the large window, his back to the desk.

He was looking out at the gray, rain-slicked towers of the Paseo de la Castellana.

His posture was rigid, his shoulders high.

Suddenly, the red light on his desk telephone began to flash.

A soft chime sounded from his computer.