His view was magnificent, but he barely noticed it. Instead, he sipped moodily at a fifteen-year-old scotch and contemplated the manila envelope sitting on his kitchen counter. The envelope had been slid under his door at some point before he arrived home, following a tense dinner with an associate who needed to have his expectations managed. When Ricardo saw it lying on the slate floors, he knew exactly who it was from and what it contained, despite the fact that it bore no markings. The man who he had paid to gather the information contained within was not the man who delivered it—a delivery service with no way to trace the assignment back to the source would have dropped it off—and there would be no fingerprints, no distinguishing marks on the paper within, no irregularities in the ink. Such discretion came at a price, but it was a price Ricardo was happy to pay. This was the first time Ricardo had hired the man in question for a personal matter, however, and that decision was the source of his mood, the reason that he hadn’t yet opened the envelope, that he wasn’t even sure he wanted to know what information he would find on the pages within.
