His voice sharpened.
“Do not touch the pattern.”
“Why?”
“Because I paid for it.”
“You haven’t paid my last two invoices.”
“You’ll be paid when the final crest reaches the printer.”
“Which printer?”
Another pause.
Then the cruelty returned.
“You are a freelance designer with overdue rent and no reputation worth protecting.
Do not suddenly pretend you have leverage.”
Iris looked at the folder of photographs.
“I have every instruction you sent.”
“You have nothing you understand.”
“I understand you marked my building.”
The line went silent.
When the client spoke again, his voice was lower.
“Send the final file, Iris.
Then delete the drafts.
If you make this difficult, the men outside your apartment will come back.”
The detective wrote something quickly.
Matteo’s stillness became frightening.
Iris kept her voice steady.
“Where should I send it?”
The client gave her a new upload address.
The call ended.
For several seconds, no one moved.
Then Matteo said, “You have your connection.”
The detective nodded.
“And an explicit threat.”
They prepared a controlled file.
Iris changed three leaves in the crest.
The new pattern indicated an empty warehouse owned by a company unrelated to Matteo.
Investigators placed surveillance around it before the file was uploaded.
The client opened the file eleven minutes later.
Within half an hour, the black sedan from Iris’s street arrived at the warehouse.
Two men entered carrying equipment used to defeat alarms and locks.
Officers arrested them before they reached the interior.
The client panicked when no confirmation arrived.
He sent four messages to Iris, each more desperate than the last.
DELETE THE FILE.
SEND THE ORIGINAL.
WHO HAVE YOU SPOKEN TO?
ANSWER ME.
Then he made his final mistake.
He drove to Iris’s building to retrieve her computer himself.
Police were waiting.
He tried to claim the design was ordinary branding work.
The revision comments contradicted him.
He denied knowing the men in the sedan.
His recorded threat contradicted him.
He insisted Iris had invented the route code.
The upload records showed that every coded change had come from his account.
By sunrise, the scheme had begun to collapse.
The client had been operating as a clean intermediary for a rival crew.
Someone inside Matteo’s organization provided schedules and addresses.
