Chapter 3 - The Enemy Watching Through the Walls
Rocco shot the chandelier camera before Luca could stop him.
Crystal exploded over the dining table.
The tiny lens struck the marble floor and shattered.
“Idiot,” Luca said.
Rocco lowered his weapon.
“He was watching.”
“And now we cannot trace the signal.”
Rocco’s jaw tightened.
Luca understood the instinct. In another life, he might have done the same. But rage was a luxury they could no longer afford.
Elena stared at the broken camera.
“How long has it been there?”
Rocco looked upward.
“The fixture was serviced two months ago.”
“By whom?”
“I’ll check.”
“No,” Elena said. “Check who approved the service.”
Rocco glanced at her.
She was pale and exhausted, wrapped in Luca’s robe, yet her mind had already moved beyond fear.
Luca felt something close to pride.
“Do it,” he told Rocco.
Within ten minutes, the penthouse became a search zone.
Security teams swept every room for microphones, cameras, and unauthorized transmitters. They found two listening devices behind wall switches, one beneath the library desk, and another inside a decorative clock in Bianca’s sitting room.
Mercer had been listening for weeks.
Perhaps months.
Every argument, business discussion, and private moment might have reached him.
Luca moved Elena to the secure study, a windowless room surrounded by reinforced walls. It had been designed for emergencies, but Elena hated the instant the steel door closed.
“It feels like a coffin.”
“It is the safest room in the building.”
“That does not make it less of a coffin.”
Luca remained near the door.
She sat on the leather sofa and stared at her hands.
Though she had washed them repeatedly, she still rubbed her fingers together as if blood remained in the lines of her skin.
Luca went to the small cabinet and poured water.
“No alcohol?” she asked.
“You need clarity.”
“I need to stop seeing his face.”
He handed her the glass.
“Alcohol won’t do that.”
“What will?”
“Time.”
“You don’t sound convinced.”
“I’m not.”
She gave a broken laugh.
For several minutes, neither spoke.
The secure room muted the noises outside. No footsteps, no voices, no rain against glass.
Only Elena’s breathing and the quiet hum of ventilation.
“Why did you bring me to your bedroom?” she asked.
Luca looked at her.
“When you found me at the gala.”
“You were in shock.”
“You could have taken me to a hospital.”
“Mercer had eyes at the gala. Possibly inside the police department. I needed somewhere controlled.”
“You carried me through the private entrance.”
“You could barely walk.”
“I remember your jacket around me.”
He said nothing.
“I also remember you telling Rocco that anyone who looked at me would lose his eyes.”
“That was an exaggeration.”
“No, it wasn’t.”
A faint smile almost touched her mouth.
Then it vanished.
“Luca, what happens to Matteo?”
“He answers questions.”
“And after that?”
“That depends on the answers.”
“He is your brother.”
“He stopped behaving like one.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
“It is the only one I have tonight.”
Elena studied him.
“You hide behind certainty when you’re afraid.”
“I am not afraid.”
“You entered the bedroom and saw blood on my dress. For one second, you were.”
He looked away.
She continued softly.
“I saw your face.”
Luca had spent his life making sure no one saw fear in him.
His father had taught him early that visible fear invited attack. At twelve, Luca had watched a man slap his father during a restaurant dispute. His father had not reacted until three days later, when the man disappeared.
“Never let anger answer before intelligence,” Antonio Valenti had said. “And never let anyone know what can break you.”
For years, Luca believed nothing could.
Then Elena Russo sat crying on his bed.
“You could have died,” he said.
“So could you, every day since I met you.”
“That is different.”
“Because you chose the risk?”
“Yes.”
“And I didn’t.”
“No.”
Her voice softened.
“Is that why you’re angry?”
“I am angry because Shaw put his hands on you.”
“That isn’t all.”
Luca crossed the room and sat opposite her.
“You want honesty?”
“Yes.”
“I am angry because when I saw that blood, I thought I had lost something I never admitted I wanted.”
Elena stopped breathing.
The words remained between them.
Luca had not planned to say them. But after betrayal, hidden cameras, and a dead man’s blood, pretense felt obscene.
“What did you want?” she asked.
“You.”
The water trembled in her glass.
“Luca…”
“I know what I am.”
“Do you?”
“I am not offering innocence. I do not have any.”
“You think that’s what frightens me?”
“It should.”
“What frightens me is how easily you decide you are beyond saving. It gives you permission not to change.”
His eyes narrowed.
“You believe I can become a different man?”
“I believe you already are different. You simply hate admitting that I can see it.”
A knock sounded against the steel door.
Luca rose instantly.
Rocco entered after giving the security code.
“We traced the chandelier camera.”
“To where?”
“A server inside one of our own office buildings.”
Luca’s expression darkened.
“Which building?”
“Valenti Tower.”
Elena stood.
“The executive floors?”
“Twenty-sixth floor. Records division.”
“That floor has restricted access,” she said.
“Exactly.”
Rocco handed Luca a tablet showing entry logs.
Three names appeared repeatedly after midnight.
Vincent Hale.
Matteo Valenti.
And Sofia DeLuca.
Rocco’s younger sister.
Luca looked up.
Rocco did not blink, but pain tightened his face.
“Sofia manages archived contracts,” Elena said. “She has access to old security plans.”
“She has access to everything Vincent requested,” Rocco replied.
“You think she is working with Mercer?”
“I think her credentials were used.”
“Could they have been stolen?” Elena asked.
“Yes.”
“Do you believe they were?”
Rocco hesitated.
“No.”
Luca watched him carefully.
Sofia had grown up in the Valenti household. After their father died, Bianca paid for her education. Luca gave her a position in the company after university.
She was not merely an employee.
She was family.
“Where is she?” Luca asked.
“Her apartment is empty. She left her phone behind.”
“When?”
“Two hours before the gala.”
Elena’s eyes widened.
Before Shaw attacked.
Luca looked at Rocco.
“Did you know she was missing?”
“No.”
The answer came too quickly.
Elena noticed.
“You did,” she said.
Rocco turned toward her.
“What?”
“You knew something was wrong before tonight.”
Rocco’s face hardened.
“This is not your concern.”
“My bloodstained dress says otherwise.”
Luca stepped closer to Rocco.
“What did Sofia tell you?”
Rocco looked between them.
Then he exhaled.
“Three weeks ago, she asked whether Mercer had contacted the family.”
“Why?”
“She claimed she had seen one of his men near her office.”
“And you did not report it?”
“She asked me not to.”
Luca’s voice went cold.
“You concealed a threat.”
“She was frightened.”
“So you protected her feelings and endangered everyone else.”
Rocco’s control cracked.
“She is my sister.”
“And Matteo is my brother.”
The comparison struck hard.
Rocco looked away.
“What else?” Luca asked.
“She said someone was following her. I increased security around her apartment.”
“Without telling me.”
“Yes.”
“Why would Mercer follow her?”
“I don’t know.”
Elena stepped closer to the tablet.
“Maybe he wasn’t following her.”
Both men looked at her.
“Maybe he was meeting her,” she said.
Rocco’s eyes flashed.
“You know nothing about Sofia.”
“I know she accessed records after midnight. I know her phone was left behind before an attack. And I know Mercer had a live camera inside this home.”
“She could have been forced.”
“Yes,” Elena said. “But hiding that possibility will not protect her.”
Rocco’s face became still.
Luca recognized the moment his friend accepted the truth he had resisted.
“Search her office,” Luca ordered.
“I’ll go.”
“No. You are too close.”
Rocco stepped forward.
“She is my responsibility.”
“That is exactly why you will stay here.”
“You don’t trust me?”
“I trust you to protect Sofia. I do not know whether that means protecting us.”
The words wounded him.
But he did not argue again.
Luca sent another team to Valenti Tower. Elena insisted on reviewing the data remotely.
For the next hour, she sat at the secure-room desk, navigating internal systems while Luca watched over her shoulder.
She found unusual transfers linked to Mercer-controlled companies. The payments had been hidden inside maintenance contracts and routed through charities.
“They used our legitimate businesses,” Elena said.
“To wash Mercer’s money?”
“No. To create evidence that you were working together.”
Luca understood immediately.
“If law enforcement finds these transfers—”
“They will believe the Valenti and Mercer organizations formed a financial partnership.”
“And after the violence begins, they can charge us as one conspiracy.”
Elena nodded.
“Mercer isn’t only trying to destroy your family. He wants you blamed for his crimes.”
Luca leaned over the desk.
“Can you separate the records?”
“With time.”
“How much?”
“Days.”
“We may have hours.”
She looked at him.
“Then stop standing behind me like an executioner and get me coffee.”
For the first time that night, Luca smiled.
It was brief, but real.
“You order me in my own home?”
“I manage your money. That makes me more powerful than you.”
He went to the cabinet.
The secure phone rang.
Luca answered.
The voice on the other end belonged to Marco, the leader of the team at Valenti Tower.
“We found Sofia’s workstation,” Marco said. “There’s blood.”
Rocco moved closer.
“Is she there?” Luca asked.
“No. But we found a message written under the desk.”
“What does it say?”
Marco hesitated.
“Tell Luca the traitor is not Sofia.”
Rocco exhaled.
Luca’s eyes narrowed.
“What else?”
“It says, ‘Ask who gave Mercer access before I was born.’”
Bianca.
The thought came to Luca immediately, followed by rejection.
His mother had helped build the family’s power after Antonio’s death. She understood every alliance, debt, and blood feud. She had also opposed Luca’s efforts to legitimize the business.
But betrayal?
No.
The steel door opened again.
One of the guards entered, breathing hard.
“Sir, your mother is gone.”
Luca turned.
“What do you mean, gone?”
“She left through the service passage during the search.”
“That exit was sealed.”
“Someone used an override code.”
“Whose?”
The guard looked at Rocco.
“His.”
Rocco stared at him.
“I did not authorize it.”
Luca stepped toward his oldest friend.
Before either man could speak, Elena’s computer chimed.
An incoming video call filled the screen.
Adrian Mercer appeared.
He sat in a dim room with a glass of wine in one hand. Behind him, Bianca Valenti was tied to a chair.
Sofia DeLuca stood beside her.
Blood streaked Sofia’s forehead, but she was alive.
Mercer smiled.
“Luca,” he said. “You have spent the evening searching for the traitor inside your home.”
He lifted his glass.
“You never considered that the betrayal began before the home belonged to you.”
Bianca stared into the camera.
“Do not listen to him.”
Mercer placed a hand on her shoulder.
“She has kept a secret from you for thirty years.”
Luca’s face remained expressionless.
But Elena saw his hand close into a fist.
“What secret?” he asked.
Mercer’s smile widened.
“The night your father died, your mother did not merely survive the attack.”
May you like
He leaned toward the camera.
“She arranged it.”
