"Open it."
Mara slowly reached out and lifted the lid. Inside, resting on dark foam, was a sleek, heavy smartphone. It wasn't a standard commercial model. The casing was reinforced, and there was no brand logo on the back.
She looked up at him. "A phone."
"Fully encrypted," Nico said, his voice dropping low enough that the nearby tables couldn't possibly hear. "It operates on a closed-loop relay system that bypasses the estate's central servers. Luca built the architecture himself."
Mara stared at the dark screen. "It bypasses the estate servers."
"Yes."
"Which means you can't monitor the calls."
"No," Nico said quietly. "I can't."
The restaurant around them seemed to fade into a dull roar. Mara looked at the man sitting across from her.
From the day she had been sold into the Ferrante family, every piece of technology she touched, every door she walked through, every word she spoke had been tracked, logged, and evaluated.
She had been a prisoner with a title.
