I didn’t dream.

  Sleep took me down hard and kept me under like I’d been drugged.

  When I woke up, the sun was already setting again.

  I’d slept through the entire day.

  My mouth tasted like copper and ash. My hands were stiff, stained dark under the nails from herbs I couldn’t scrub out. My wrist had a burn mark from where the Palimpsest Salt had spat at me.

  I sat up slow, head swimming.

  The room felt wrong. Too quiet. Like the world had moved on without me and forgotten to leave a note.

  Then I saw it.

  A piece of paper, slipped under my door.

  I picked it up.

  Tonight. 8 PM. Bring everything.

  No signature.

  Didn’t need one.

  I showed up early.

  Not because I was eager.

  Because being late to Oscar felt like the kind of mistake you didn’t get to make twice.

  The laundromat was closed again. Lights off upstairs, machines silent. The building had that empty weight to it—the kind that meant Oscar had cleared it out on purpose.

  Marco met me at the back door.

  He looked different.

  Cleaned up. Hair trimmed short to match the scorched patches. Beard gone entirely now, shaved clean.

  He looked younger without it. Harder, somehow.

  “Oscar’s downstairs,” Marco said.

  I followed him through the corridors I was starting to know too well, past the butcher shop, past the cold storage, down a set of stairs I’d never taken before.

  The air got colder as we descended.

  Damper.

  Like we were going somewhere the city had forgotten existed.

  We stopped at a heavy door—steel, not wood—with a lock that looked like it belonged on a bank vault.

  Marco knocked twice.

  A pause.

  Then the lock clicked.

  The door opened.

  Oscar stood on the other side, coat off, sleeves rolled up.

  Behind him: a table.

  On the table: three ledgers.

  Thick. Old. The kind of books that had weight before you even opened them.

  Oscar gestured me in.

  “Close the door,” he said.

  Marco did.

  The sound echoed wrong in the small space.

  Oscar walked to the table, rested one hand on the top ledger like he was taking an oath.

  “These,” he said quietly, “are the family’s memory.”

  He looked at me.

  “Names. Routes. Debts. Alliances. Enemies. Everything that keeps this operation running and everyone in it breathing.”

  He paused.

  “If the wrong people see these, the family splits. If the cops get them, we all hang. If they burn, we lose twenty years of structure and have to start over in the dark.”

  Oscar’s eyes didn’t blink.

  “You told me you could make them unreadable. Untouchable. Protected.”

  He stepped back from the table.

  “Prove it.”

  I set my satchel down and pulled out the five bottles one by one, lining them up on the edge of the table like I was preparing for surgery.

  Vellum Veil.

  This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

  Lazarus Wash.

  Palimpsest Salt.

  Quietus Bloom.

  Pilgrim’s Clamp.

  Oscar watched every move.

  Marco stood by the door, arms folded, silent.

  I opened the first ledger.

  The pages were covered in tight handwriting—names, dates, numbers. Some entries in English. Some in Italian. Some in a shorthand I didn’t recognize.

  I closed it again before I could read too much.

  Didn’t need to know.

  Didn’t want to know.

  “The order matters,” I said, more to steady myself than to inform Oscar. “If I apply them wrong, they interfere with each other. The system collapses.”

  Oscar nodded once. “Then don’t apply them wrong.”

  I exhaled slow.

  Started with Vellum Veil.

  I opened the bottle, poured a thin layer onto a cloth, and began coating the cover. Front, back, spine. Slow, methodical, making sure every inch was covered.

  The brew sank into the leather like water into sand.

  When I finished, I set it aside to dry and started on the pages.

  This part was harder.

  I had to apply the Veil to the edges of the pages without soaking through, without warping the paper, without making it obvious someone had tampered with it.

  I worked in silence.

  Oscar didn’t interrupt.

  Marco didn’t move.

  The only sound was my breathing and the faint whisper of cloth on paper.

  When I finished the first ledger, I moved to the second.

  Then the third.

  By the time all three were sealed with Vellum Veil, my hands were shaking and my vision was starting to blur at the edges.

  “Next,” I said quietly.

  Palimpsest Salt.

  I mixed it fresh—had to, it didn’t store well—grinding the components in a small mortar I’d brought, adding just enough carrier to make it spreadable.

  I applied it to the inner margins of each ledger, invisible unless you knew where to look.

  If anyone tried to alter a page, swap one out, erase an entry—the salt would mark it. Faint spiderweb lines that couldn’t be hidden.

  Oscar leaned in slightly, watching.

  “How long does that last?” he asked.

  “Years,” I said. “As long as the paper survives.”

  Oscar nodded, satisfied.

  Next: Quietus Bloom.

  The failsafe.

  This one made my stomach turn every time I opened the bottle.

  Because Quietus didn’t protect.

  It destroyed.

  If someone forced the ledger open wrong—if they didn’t know the sequence, didn’t have permission, didn’t follow the rules—the meaning would collapse.

  Permanently.

  No recovery.

  No second chance.

  Just blank pages full of ink that didn’t say anything anymore.

  I applied it carefully, a thin layer over the Veil, letting it bond.

  The brew smelled like funeral flowers.

  When I finished, I stepped back and let myself breathe.

  Three ledgers.

  Sealed.

  Protected.

  Deadly if mishandled.

  Oscar walked up to the table and stared at them.

  “They look the same,” he said.

  “That’s the point,” I replied.

  Oscar picked up the first ledger.

  Opened it.

  Stared at blank pages.

  Not empty—there was still ink, still texture—but the meaning was gone. The words refused to make sense. His eyes couldn’t hold onto them.

  He closed it.

  Looked at me.

  “Lazarus Wash,” I said, picking up the fourth bottle. “Thirty-minute window. You apply it when you need to read. The meaning comes back. Then it locks again.”

  I demonstrated.

  Opened the bottle. Applied a thin layer to my fingertips. Touched the corner of the page.

  Waited.

  Thirty seconds.

  Then the words began to surface.

  Not appearing—surfacing. Like they’d been underwater and were finally allowed to breathe.

  Oscar leaned in, reading.

  I watched his face.

  He didn’t react to the content.

  He reacted to the fact that it worked.

  “How long?” he asked.

  “Thirty minutes from application. Then it fades again.”

  Oscar checked his watch.

  We waited in silence.

  I could feel the minutes dragging. My pulse in my throat. Marco shifting slightly by the door.

  Twenty-five minutes.

  The words started to blur.

  Twenty-eight minutes.

  They were drifting again, sinking back under.

  Thirty minutes.

  Blank.

  Oscar closed the ledger and set it down carefully.

  Then he looked at me with something I hadn’t seen before.

  Not respect.

  Need.

  “Last one,” Oscar said.

  Pilgrim’s Clamp.

  The transit lock.

  The one that turned the ledger into a bomb if someone tried to force it during transport.

  I applied it to the spines, thick and deliberate, making sure it bonded to the Vellum Veil underneath.

  When I finished, I stepped back.

  “Done.”

  Oscar stared at the three ledgers like they were something holy.

  Then he looked at Marco.

  “Test it.”

  Marco’s eyes widened slightly. “Oscar—”

  “Test it,” Oscar repeated. “Take one. Try to force it open. Simulate a seizure.”

  Marco looked at me.

  I said nothing.

  What was there to say?

  Marco walked to the table, picked up the third ledger, and held it like it might bite him.

  He gripped the spine.

  Started to twist, like he was trying to pry it open without permission.

  I held my breath.

  Then—

  Heat.

  A whisper of smoke.

  Marco dropped the ledger fast.

  It hit the table.

  Edges blackening.

  Paper collapsing inward.

  Ash blooming controlled and fast, like a flower made of fire.

  In ten seconds, the ledger was gone.

  Just a pile of ash and a faint scorch mark on the table.

  Marco stared at his hands.

  No burns this time—he’d dropped it fast enough.

  But his expression said everything.

  Oscar walked over to the ash pile.

  Touched it with one finger.

  Cold already.

  He looked at me.

  “How much warning do they get?”

  “None,” I said. “If they force it, it burns. No countdown. No second chance.”

  Oscar nodded slowly.

  Then he turned to Marco.

  “Clean this up,” he said, gesturing at the ash. “Then take the other two downstairs. Locked cabinet. No one touches them without my say.”

  Marco nodded and moved immediately.

  Oscar looked at me.

  “You just made the family safer than it’s been in twenty years,” he said quietly.

  I should’ve felt proud.

  I felt cold.

  Because I knew what came next.

  Oscar walked me back upstairs.

  We didn’t talk.

  When we reached the back corridor, he stopped.

  “Word’s going to spread,” Oscar said.

  I looked at him.

  “About what you can do,” he continued. “The other families. The Consigliere. Maybe even the Don.”

  He paused.

  “When that happens, they’re going to want the same thing I wanted. Protection. Control. Certainty.”

  Oscar’s eyes stayed flat.

  “You’re not making brews for me anymore, Garrett. You’re making them for the family. All of it.”

  My throat went tight.

  “And if I say no?”

  Oscar didn’t smile.

  “Then you’re not useful anymore.”

  He let that hang.

  Then: “But you won’t say no. Because you’re good at this. And men who are good at things don’t walk away when they’re needed.”

  He clapped me once on the shoulder.

  “Go home. Sleep. Tomorrow we talk about scaling up.”

  Then he walked away, leaving me standing in the dim hallway with herb stains on my hands and the weight of three families pressing down on my chest.

  I walked home through streets that felt too bright, too loud, too normal.

  People laughed. Cars honked. A kid ran past chasing a ball.

  No one knew what I’d just done.

  No one knew I’d just built a weapon that didn’t kill people—it killed truth.

  And the worst part was, I was already thinking about what came next.

  Not how to escape.

  How to refine it.

  How to make the system better.

  How to prove I was indispensable.

  I made it to my apartment, locked the door, and sat down at my table.

  Dimitri’s book was still there, open to the page I’d been studying weeks ago.

  I stared at it.

  Then I turned the page.

  And started reading the next recipe.