Chapter 4 - A CALCULATED RISK
The penthouse of the Romano Tower was a fortress of glass, steel, and silence. Sophie had been moved there under the cover of night, escorted by Matteo and three heavily armed guards. She sat at a massive mahogany dining table, surrounded by glowing monitors displaying a decade of the Romano family’s illicit financial architecture.
For three hours, the only sound was the rapid clatter of her fingers over the keyboard. Matteo sat in the shadows across the room, nursing a glass of scotch, watching her. He had expected her to break down, to cry, to beg for her life. Instead, she had treated her kidnapping as an aggressively mismanaged corporate merger.
“Found it,” Sophie said suddenly, breaking the quiet.
Matteo was on his feet instantly, leaning over her shoulder. He smelled of bergamot and gun oil.
“Look at the disbursement dates,” Sophie pointed at the screen, tapping a column of seemingly random numbers. “Your shell companies in the West Loop have been bleeding micro-percentages for eighteen months. It’s a classic salami-slicing technique. But the real anomaly is the security budget. Someone authorized a routine software update on the vault the exact night my sister broke in.”
“Who signed off on the update?” Matteo’s voice was dangerously soft.
“An administrative proxy,” Sophie traced the code backward, her eyes darting across the glowing text. “Routed through three different servers, but the origin IP matches a property deeded to a 'Vincent Moretti'.”
Matteo went entirely still. The Morettis were his blood rivals.
“And the internal authorization code used to let the Morettis into my system?” Matteo asked, dread coiling in his chest.
Sophie hit the enter key. A name flashed on the screen in bright white text.
Domenic.
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Matteo’s breath hitched. Domenic was his underboss. His cousin. The man who had trained him how to shoot.
“He didn't just help my sister steal the bonds,” Sophie said, turning to look up at Matteo, her green eyes serious. “He’s selling your entire infrastructure to the Morettis. The robbery was just a distraction to cover the data breach. He is dismantling you from the inside.”
