The name on the screen seemed to burn into the very air of the room. VECCHIO, A. Alessio Vecchio. A name synonymous with loyalty and fear, a pillar of the Moretti empire for two decades. The revelation did not cause Damiano to rage. It caused something far more terrifying. A profound, absolute stillness settled over him, the calm at the eye of a hurricane. The raw fury from moments before condensed into a singularity of pure, cold purpose. His silver eyes, fixed on the name, seemed to turn to ice. Every trace of the seductive billionaire or the intrigued captor vanished, leaving only the king, the butcher, the man who had built an empire on the ashes of his enemies. He had found the serpent coiled at the heart of his garden, and now, he would burn the garden down to kill it.
He turned to Leo, who stood frozen, his professional composure momentarily shattered by the sheer magnitude of the betrayal. When Damiano's voice came, it was much too unnervingly soft, yet every word was a steel blade. "Leo." Leo snapped his head up, his focus total. "Seal this building. No one enters or leaves without your direct authorization. Dispatch your primary unit to Vecchio's home. I want him, and I want everything that can hold a memory-his computers, his phones, his wife. Bring him to the warehouse." He paused, his gaze merciless. "Alive." The unspoken promise in that single word was more brutal than any threat of death. He then looked at Serena. "His office is to be sealed. Digitally and physically. Nothing goes in, nothing comes out until I say so. I want every file he has ever touched, every email he has ever sent, every byte of data that carries his digital scent." Leo nodded once, a curt, sharp movement. His shock had been replaced by a grim, focused resolve. He turned and strode from the room without a word, already issuing commands into his earpiece. He was no longer a warden; he was the instrument of the king's wrath.
Alone in the server room next to Damiano, Serena found herself with Damiano. Silence weighed heavily upon them. He finally turned his gaze upon her, and it was inscrutable, something between a cold appraisal of her and something she could not name. "You have done me a service tonight, Serena Vale," he said flatly. He stepped a bit closer, eyes scanning her face. "You have a talent for finding weakness." As he spoke, Serena's mind was a maelstrom. Alessio Vecchio. Security chief. He would have run the whole operation the night Marco was killed. He would have run the assassins, controlled any flow of information, and covered the tracks. But now, finally, a hairline crack was being made between her rock-solid certainty about her revenge, and what if Damiano's order had been twisted? What if Marco was not the target, but simply a pawn in some far larger game being played by Vecchio to sow chaos or cover his own betrayals? That would not let Damiano off the hook; he was still the monster atop the food chain-but would put a dizzying variable into the mix. Her path to vengeance was no longer a straight line.
Your work here is done, Damiano said, in a dismissive tone that pulled her from her reflections. "Return to your suite. This chapter is not for your eyes now. Turn away from her, his mind already focused on the war he was preparing to wage internally within his own house. Anda dismisses you. A guard was at the door to escort her, and when she walked through now-tense corridors, she saw the Moretti estate transforming. The noise of quiet luxury was replaced with the speed and efficiency of military tactics. Teams of dark-suited men with rifles held at the ready moved with silent purpose, their faces grim. She was witnessing an empire turning on itself, a body trying to purge its own poison, and she was the one who had identified the disease.
Upon reaching the sanctuary of her suite, the door locking behind her, she didn't stop to breathe. There was her encounter with Damiano, the revelation of Vecchio's name, and now the seed of doubt planted into her mind-and all swirled into a vortex of confusion and urgency. She headed directly to the laptop Leo had provided, her hands moving with feverish purpose. She passed over her decoy project, deep diving into the hidden, encrypted partition where her own secret resided. There it was. A single file, the fruit of her secret back door. GHOST_DATA.PKG. It was the complete, unedited data packet the traitor had stolen. The information that Damiano and Leo didn't know she had. The raw, unfiltered truth. Inside this file was the answer to everything-the scope of Vecchio's betrayal, his motives, and maybe, just maybe, the truth about what really happened to her brother. Her mission had been to destroy Damiano Moretti. But now, having the key to his enemy's secrets, she was faced with an impossible choice. The path to vengeance was no longer clear, and the monster she was hunting might not be the only one in the shadows.