Chapter 5 - The First Thread Unravels
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Rocco didn't use the front door when he returned to the estate three days later. He used the underground service tunnel that connected the wine cellar to the secure garage, entering my study like a ghost.
He tossed a thick, unmarked manila folder onto the center of my desk.
"You were right to be suspicious, Boss," Rocco grunted, pouring himself a measure of bourbon from the crystal decanter. "Vivien's background is clean on paper. Too clean. But when you dig into the encrypted communication logs coming from the guest house router, the picture gets very dirty."
I opened the folder. The first page was a printed list of incoming and outgoing calls from a burner phone routing through a heavily encrypted virtual private network.
"She’s been using a ghost phone," Rocco explained, taking a sip of his drink. "She only turns it on for five minutes at a time, usually between three and four in the morning. Always the same number. Always untraceable."
"Nothing is untraceable," I said coldly, scanning the data.
"Exactly. My tech guys bounced the signal off three dummy towers. The receiver is located in a high-rise downtown. A penthouse leased by the Moretti family."
My blood turned to ice. The Morettis were my oldest, most ruthless rivals. A brutal syndicate from New York attempting to establish a violent foothold in my city. We had been in a cold war for over two years, resulting in a fragile, highly volatile truce.
"She’s a plant," I whispered, the devastating realization settling over me.
"Worse," Rocco corrected grimly, flipping to the second page of the file. It was a surveillance photo taken outside a high-end boutique downtown. Vivien was standing in the shadows of an alley, handing a thick envelope to a man wearing a dark overcoat.
"That's Carlo Moretti," I identified the man instantly, recognizing the scar on his jawline. "The underboss."
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"She isn't just spying on you, Lorenzo," Rocco said, his voice dropping to a gravelly warning. "She’s funding them. We found three massive wire transfers authorized from your secondary charity accounts. She’s been siphoning your money to finance the Moretti family's expansion into our territory."
Vivien wasn't just a traitor. She was the architect of my family's impending destruction.
