Chapter 3 - THE NIGHT DANTE LEARNED FEAR
Dante Moretti had made grown men shake with a look.
That night, I watched fear enter his face.
Not fear for himself.
For me.
“Daniel.”
His security chief appeared immediately.
“Seal the building.”
“It already is.”
“Check rooftops, river access, kitchen deliveries, every employee.”
Daniel nodded.
I caught his sleeve.
“The sender wants panic.”
Dante looked at me.
“You are not analyzing the psychology of someone threatening to kill you.”
“That is literally what I used to do.”
“You used to do?”
“Sometimes.”
“You said trade arbitration.”
“I simplified.”
His stare could have melted steel.
“What else did you simplify?”
“Dante.”
“What else?”
Vittorio intervened.
“If she was with Laurent Voss, she wasn’t merely an attorney.”
I looked at him.
He continued.
“They used lawyers, accountants, former intelligence analysts, customs specialists.”
Lorenzo stared at me.
“You were intelligence?”
“No.”
“What were you?”
“I found patterns.”
Dante laughed once.
There was no humor in it.
“Of course you did.”
I almost smiled.
Then the restaurant lights went out.
Someone shouted.
Chairs moved.
Dante grabbed me before I could move.
His arm locked around my waist as Daniel’s men drew weapons.
Emergency lighting activated seconds later.
Nobody had been shot.
Nobody had entered.
But the contract was gone.
The folder that had been sitting beside Vittorio was empty.
“That was the point,” I said.
Dante looked toward the darkened service corridor.
“Someone came for the agreement.”
“No.”
I stood.
“They came for one page.”
The appendix containing Orfeo Maritime was missing.
Everything else remained.
Dante stared.
“How did they know we found it?”
“They were listening.”
Daniel swept the room.
Underneath the flower arrangement nearest Dante’s chair was a miniature transmitter.
Professional.
Recently planted.
Vittorio’s expression became murderous.
“Someone inside my people?”
“Or ours,” Dante said.
My mind was already moving.
Who knew the dinner location?
Who knew the final contract existed?
Who could access both Moretti legal and the restaurant?
Then I remembered something Marco DeLuca had said three weeks earlier.
Dante had been complaining about the Bellini negotiations.
Marco smiled and told him:
Sometimes a contract becomes profitable because everyone misunderstands the same sentence.
At the time, I thought he was being clever.
Now I wasn’t so sure.
Dante called Marco.
No answer.
Again.
Nothing.
Daniel checked his location.
Marco’s phone was transmitting from his Gold Coast apartment.
Security reached it eleven minutes later.
The apartment was empty.
Phone on the kitchen counter.
Closet half-cleared.
Passport gone.
But there was one thing on Marco’s desk.
An old photograph.
Me.
Five years younger.
Standing outside a courthouse in Geneva beside Alessandro Vieri.
On the back, someone had written:
SHE SURVIVED THE FIRST TIME.
May you like
Below it was a date.
Tomorrow.
