Chapter 3 - The Cold Room
The estate did not sleep after the guests left. By three in the morning, the great hall was nothing but a graveyard of empty bottles, crushed rose petals, and the stale, heavy scent of expensive tobacco. The servants moved like ghosts through the shadows, clearing the silver, their footsteps muffled by the thick Persian runners.
Aleandro sat alone in his private study on the third floor. The room was dark, save for the green glow of the banker’s lamp on his desk and the orange ember of his cigar.
The door clicked open.
Bernardo, a man whose hair had gone white in the service of Aleandro’s father, stepped into the room. He didn't carry weapons; his mind was the most lethal tool the Moretti family owned. He set a thick manila folder on the mahogany desk, right next to the gold coin Emma had carried earlier—which Aleandro had retrieved from the kitchen before the child went to sleep.
"The device was an encrypted military-grade transmitter, boss," Bernardo said, his voice rough from decades of night work. "It didn't route through the local towers. It used an uplink that belongs to a federal task force out of Chicago. The RICO division."
Aleandro let out a long, slow plume of smoke. The blue smoke curled around the green lamp, looking like a miniature storm cloud.
"Marco?" Aleandro asked.
"The security logs for the northern estate show he spent forty-two nights there over the winter," Bernardo replied, his face remaining a blank mask of professional neutrality. "The official reason was the perimeter upgrade. But the stable master says Marco’s car never left the private garage until four in the morning on the weekends you stayed in the city."
The betrayal was not a sudden strike; it was a slow, deliberate rot that had been allowed to grow in the foundation of his own house. Sophia had been introduced to him by Marco three years ago, presented as the daughter of a bankrupt shipping clerk from New Jersey. A woman without ties, without protection, easily broken, easily loved.
It had all been a play.
"Where is she now?" Aleandro asked.
"In the west wing suite. She took a sleeping draught from the house doctor. She thinks you are downstairs with the auditors finalizing the Sicilian shipping manifests."
Aleandro stood up, stubbing out the cigar in a crystal ash receiver with a single, brutal twist of his wrist. He walked to the window, looking out at the dark expanse of the lawn where the rain was still falling, turning the formal gardens into a gray morass.
"And Marco?"
"He’s at the docks, boss. Checking the midnight crate arrivals from Palermo. Or so he told the gate guard."
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Aleandro looked down at his own hand—the hand that had held Sophia’s on the linen, the hand that had signed the marriage contract that would have given her legal access to every account, every safehouse, every identity the Moretti family possessed.
"Bring the car around, Bernardo," Aleandro said quietly. "Let’s go see what my cousin is shipping."
