Chapter 5 - The Enemy Inside
Vincent read the note twice.
Daniel Hale trusted the wrong Moretti.
So did his daughter.
He showed no visible reaction, but Lena saw his fingers tighten around the paper.
“What does it mean?” she asked.
“It means Bishop is closer than we believed.”
“Inside your family?”
“Inside my organization.”
Agent Shaw ordered the safe apartment sealed as a crime scene. The guard, Marco, had been drugged through a cup of coffee delivered by someone he recognized.
Security footage had been erased.
Only a handful of people knew the original data key remained in the apartment.
Vincent.
Sofia.
Agent Shaw.
Vincent’s technical specialist.
Three senior members of his organization.
And Lena.
One of them was connected to Bishop.
Vincent moved Lena to his private residence at the top of a guarded building overlooking Manhattan. Unlike the glamorous apartment where he had rescued her, this home felt restrained and almost austere.
Dark wood.
Clean lines.
Few photographs.
No personal clutter.
“You live like someone expecting to leave quickly,” Lena said.
Vincent placed her bag in the guest room.
“I live like someone who dislikes leaving evidence of attachment.”
“That sounds lonely.”
“It’s practical.”
“Those aren’t opposites.”
He looked at her for a moment before walking away.
Lena’s arm throbbed constantly. Her bruises were fading, but sleep remained impossible. Whenever she closed her eyes, she heard Eric pounding on the bathroom door.
Vincent seemed to sleep even less.
At three in the morning, Lena found him in the kitchen making coffee.
“Do Mafia bosses ever drink tea?” she asked.
“Only under extreme pressure.”
She sat across from him.
“Then maybe tonight qualifies.”
Vincent prepared tea.
The ordinary act felt strangely intimate. He moved carefully, measuring water and waiting for it to boil rather than rushing.
“My father trusted your family,” Lena said.
“Yes.”
“Did your father betray him?”
Vincent did not answer immediately.
“My father, Antonio, believed loyalty meant obedience. Daniel challenged him. He found inconsistencies in the accounts and wanted to report them to federal authorities.”
“Your father threatened him?”
“I don’t know.”
“That’s difficult to believe.”
“My father kept secrets from everyone, including his sons.”
“Sons?”
Vincent’s expression changed slightly.
“I had an older brother. Gabriel.”
“Had?”
“He died two years after your father.”
“How?”
“A shooting.”
“Was he involved in the business?”
“He was expected to inherit it.”
“Did he know my father?”
“Yes.”
The note returned to Lena’s mind.
The wrong Moretti.
“Could Gabriel have been Bishop?”
“No.”
“You answered quickly.”
“I watched him die.”
“That doesn’t answer whether he betrayed my father.”
Vincent set down his cup.
“Gabriel was many things, but he wasn’t Bishop.”
“How can you be certain?”
“Because Bishop continued operating after Gabriel’s death.”
Lena accepted that for the moment.
The next day, Vincent gathered his senior men in the residence library.
Lena recognized Marco, pale but recovering from the drug. There was also Carlo Rizzo, Vincent’s uncle and longtime adviser; Dominic Vella, head of security; and Adrian Moretti, Vincent’s younger cousin who managed legitimate businesses.
Sofia and Agent Shaw joined by secure video.
Vincent placed the note on the table.
“Someone in this room knew where the key was kept.”
Carlo bristled.
“You are accusing family?”
“I am stating a fact.”
Dominic crossed his arms.
“The federal agent knew.”
Shaw’s voice sharpened through the screen.
“My team was occupied at the warehouse.”
“So were ours,” Dominic replied.
Adrian looked toward Lena.
“She knew.”
Vincent’s gaze turned cold.
“Choose your next words carefully.”
Adrian raised both hands.
“I’m not accusing her. I’m saying Bishop may have reached her without her realizing it.”
Lena thought of Maria, coworkers, neighbors, hospital staff.
Anyone could have passed information.
Sofia displayed the safe apartment’s access records. A maintenance code had opened the service elevator. The code belonged to Moretti Properties, managed by Adrian.
He denied using it.
Then Marco remembered the coffee.
“It came from Rossi’s Café,” he said. “The delivery driver said Mr. Moretti sent it.”
“Which Mr. Moretti?” Vincent asked.
“He said Adrian.”
Adrian’s face drained.
“I didn’t.”
Vincent examined him.
“Where were you during the warehouse operation?”
“At the Eastside hotel meeting investors.”
“Witnesses?”
“Twenty.”
The alibi checked out.
Someone had used Adrian’s name and code to frame him.
Lena looked around the room.
Bishop was not simply stealing information.
He was turning them against one another.
That afternoon, Sofia discovered something hidden within Daniel’s files. A set of dates corresponded to deposits made into an account under the name G. Moretti.
Gabriel Moretti.
Vincent read the report in silence.
“You said your brother couldn’t be Bishop,” Lena reminded him.
“He isn’t.”
“But he received stolen money.”
“Or someone used his name.”
“Like Eric used mine.”
Vincent looked at her.
“Yes.”
For the first time, he seemed uncertain.
Lena reached for the pendant, forgetting it was no longer around her neck.
The original data key was gone, but the copied files had exposed most of the financial network. Bishop still wanted something else.
“What was missing from the transmission?” she asked.
Vincent summoned the technical specialist, Noah Grant.
Noah explained that several encrypted subfolders had not transferred before agents disconnected the reader. The original key might unlock them.
“What are they labeled?” Lena asked.
Noah hesitated.
“Catherine.”
Lena’s mother’s name.
Her pulse quickened.
“My mother was involved?”
“We don’t know,” Vincent said.
Lena remembered Catherine Hale as quiet and anxious after Daniel’s death. She rarely spoke about him. Years later, when Eric entered Lena’s life, Catherine distrusted him immediately.
“You don’t know what that man wants,” her mother once warned.
Lena accused her of being bitter and controlling.
Eric encouraged the distance between them.
By the time Catherine became ill, Lena visited only when Eric allowed it.
Guilt tightened her throat.
“My mother tried to warn me.”
Vincent stood beside her.
“Eric isolated you intentionally.”
“I let him.”
“You were manipulated.”
“That doesn’t erase what I said to her.”
“No.”
His honesty hurt, but she valued it.
“It also doesn’t erase what she knew about your circumstances,” he added. “Parents sometimes recognize when their children are trapped, even when the children deny it.”
A call interrupted them.
Maria had been discharged from the hospital.
She insisted on reopening the diner that evening.
Lena called her.
“You need to rest.”
“I’ve rested enough,” Maria said. “Those men took one night from me. They don’t get another.”
“You could have been killed because of me.”
“No, sweetheart. I was taken because bad men decided my life was useful. That shame belongs to them.”
Lena closed her eyes.
Maria had always known how to place blame where it belonged.
That evening, Lena returned to Bellini’s Diner under guard.
The staff hugged her. Customers left flowers. Maria stood behind the counter with a bandage near her temple and poured coffee as though defiance were a daily special.
Vincent occupied the same booth where he had first seen Lena months earlier.
She sat across from him.
“Did you leave the card because you knew Eric’s plan?”
“No.”
“Did my father ask your family to protect me?”
Vincent looked at the black coffee before him.
“He asked Gabriel.”
The revelation settled between them.
“Your brother?”
“Daniel believed my father had been compromised. He trusted Gabriel instead.”
“What happened?”
“Gabriel promised to protect you and your mother. After Daniel died, he arranged financial support anonymously.”
“My mother struggled to pay rent.”
“The payments stopped when Gabriel was killed.”
“Did you know about the promise?”
“Not until years later, when I found Daniel’s name in Gabriel’s papers.”
“And then you found me.”
“Yes.”
Lena looked around the diner.
“So the card was about guilt.”
“Partly.”
“At least that’s honest.”
“I also saw your husband’s fingerprints around your wrist.”
She stared at him.
“Why didn’t you call the police?”
“Would you have spoken against Eric then?”
No.
She hated that he knew it.
A waitress approached with a coffee pot. She was young, nervous, and unfamiliar.
Lena noticed her because Bellini’s rarely hired anyone without Maria mentioning it.
The woman smiled and reached toward Vincent’s cup.
Lena saw a tiny vial hidden in her palm.
“Don’t drink that!”
Vincent caught the woman’s wrist.
She dropped the pot and pulled a small blade from her apron.
Dominic intercepted her before she reached Lena.
Customers screamed and moved toward the exit.
The woman struggled violently until Marco restrained her.
A tattoo showed beneath her sleeve.
A bishop chess piece.
Agent Shaw questioned her for hours.
The woman carried no identification and refused to speak. Her fingerprints matched no database.
But the vial contained the same drug used on Marco.
Bishop had sent a message.
He could reach them anywhere.
Later that night, Lena stood on Vincent’s balcony overlooking the city.
“You should stay away from me,” he said behind her.
She turned.
“What?”
“Bishop is targeting you because of me.”
“He targeted my father before I knew you.”
“He may believe hurting you weakens my judgment.”
“Does it?”
Vincent’s silence answered.
Lena stepped closer.
“Why?”
He looked toward the skyline.
“Because when you called, I heard something I recognized.”
“What?”
“The moment a person decides fear is worse than the consequences of resistance.”
“You’ve felt that?”
“Once.”
“With your father?”
“Yes.”
Vincent rarely offered pieces of himself. Lena understood the cost of this one.
“What happened?”
“I resisted.”
“And?”
“I became the man people fear.”
She studied him.
“That isn’t all you are.”
“You don’t know enough to say that.”
“I know you could have killed Eric, and you didn’t.”
“Because you asked me not to.”
“You listened.”
His eyes met hers.
The distance between them changed.
Lena felt it—not safety exactly, but recognition.
She stepped back before the feeling could become something she was not ready to name.
A phone rang inside.
Vincent answered.
His face hardened.
“What is it?” Lena asked.
He ended the call.
“Eric escaped federal custody.”
“How?”
“An armored transport was ambushed.”
Her body went cold.
“Where is he?”
“We don’t know.”
Another message arrived on Lena’s phone.
A photograph showed Eric standing beside her mother’s grave.
He held the stolen pendant in one hand.
May you like
The text beneath it read:
Come home, Lena. We have unfinished business.
