Chapter 4 - The Woman Who Knew Too Much
Elena did not ask permission.
She grabbed her coat.
“I’m going home.”
Vittorio blocked the doorway.
“No.”
“Move.”
“No.”
“That’s my home.”
“And someone is outside it.”
“Exactly.”
“You walk into that building and you give them what they want.”
Elena’s eyes flashed.
“My mother’s things are there.”
“Things can be replaced.”
“No.”
The word came out harder than she intended.
Vittorio understood immediately.
Some things could not be replaced.
He stepped aside.
“I’m coming.”
“I don’t need—”
“That wasn’t a negotiation.”
Twenty minutes later, Elena sat in the rear of a black SUV beside Vittorio.
Marco drove.
Two security vehicles followed.
Nobody spoke.
Elena watched the city pass.
She had begun the morning worrying whether her uniform looked professional enough.
Now a mafia boss was escorting her home because someone who had watched his bedroom for months was threatening her.
She almost laughed.
Instead, she cried.
Quietly.
She turned toward the window so nobody would notice.
Vittorio noticed.
He offered a handkerchief.
Not tissue.
An actual folded handkerchief.
Elena looked at it.
“Seriously?”
“My mother insists.”
That made her laugh despite herself.
She took it.
“Thank you.”
They reached her building.
Marco went inside first.
Five minutes.
Ten.
Then he returned.
“Clear.”
Elena climbed out.
Her apartment door looked normal.
She unlocked it.
Inside, everything appeared untouched.
She went straight to the bedroom.
Her mother’s photographs remained on the dresser.
Jewelry box.
Old letters.
A knitted blue blanket.
All there.
Elena exhaled.
Then she noticed something.
One photograph had been turned around.
She picked it up.
It showed Elena at eleven years old between her parents.
On the back was writing.
Not recent.
Her father’s handwriting.
E—
If anything ever happens to me, remember the music box.
Love, Dad.
Elena stared.
She had never seen the message.
Because the photograph had remained framed for twenty-seven years.
“The music box,” she whispered.
Vittorio stood in the doorway.
“What?”
Elena moved to the closet.
A cardboard box sat on the highest shelf.
She pulled it down.
Inside were objects from her childhood.
School ribbons.
Birthday cards.
A plastic bracelet.
And a wooden music box.
Her father had given it to her when she turned ten.
She wound it.
Nothing.
“It stopped working years ago.”
Vittorio crouched beside her.
“May I?”
She handed it over.
He examined the bottom.
One screw differed from the others.
Newer.
He looked at Elena.
She found a screwdriver.
Inside the music mechanism was a small envelope.
Elena’s hands trembled.
She opened it.
A key.
And a handwritten number.
Nothing else.
Vittorio studied the key.
“Safe-deposit box.”
“You’re sure?”
“No.”
“You sounded sure.”
“I’m mafia. Confidence is part of the uniform.”
Elena stared at him.
Then laughed.
Vittorio smiled for the first time.
It changed his face.
For one second, he looked thirty-eight instead of fifty.
Then Marco called from the living room.
“We have movement.”
The smile vanished.
Vittorio stood.
“What?”
“Celia’s credit card.”
“Where?”
“Bus terminal.”
They returned to the mansion.
Marco dispatched men to the terminal.
Celia was gone when they arrived.
But security footage showed her buying a ticket.
Not boarding.
“She wanted us to follow the ticket,” Marco said.
Vittorio nodded.
“She’s buying time.”
Elena held the key.
“For what?”
Nobody knew.
Dominic researched the number.
317 belonged to a safe-deposit box at Hudson Commonwealth Bank.
Registered to Thomas Marlowe.
Still active.
Elena stared at the record.
“My father has been dead eight years.”
“Someone kept paying the fee,” Dominic said.
“Who?”
“Cash.”
They went to the bank.
Elena alone was authorized as beneficiary.
The manager escorted her to the vault.
Vittorio waited outside.
Elena inserted the key.
Box 317 opened.
Inside was a thick envelope.
A flash drive.
And a handwritten letter.
She read the letter first.
My Elena,
If you are reading this, then I was right to be afraid.
I discovered something while working for Moretti Security twelve years ago. The surveillance network was not installed by Vittorio Moretti. He was young then and knew nothing about it.
Someone inside his father’s organization built a private archive.
They recorded everyone.
Friends.
Enemies.
Police.
Judges.
Family.
The purpose was leverage.
I found the hidden network because I could hear one of the transformers.
When I reported it, I was told the system had been removed.
It wasn’t.
I copied enough evidence to protect us.
Then I made a mistake.
I told one person what I had done.
Elena stopped reading.
Her hands shook.
She forced herself onward.
If you ever need the truth, the drive contains it.
Do not trust the person whose signature appears most often.
Signatures can be stolen.
Trust the person who had something to lose before the system was ever discovered.
Dad.
Elena read the last paragraph twice.
Something to lose.
She inserted the flash drive into a secure laptop the bank provided.
Folders appeared.
Invoices.
Installation records.
Audio logs.
Photographs.
One folder was named PROJECT MORPHEUS.
Elena opened it.
Technical documents.
Low-frequency emitters.
Sleep disruption.
Psychological stress.
Audio collection.
She felt cold.
This was not simply surveillance.
Someone had turned Vittorio’s bedroom into an experiment.
She opened another file.
AUTHORIZED TARGETS.
Names appeared.
Vittorio Moretti.
Marco Bellini.
Isabella Moretti.
Several politicians.
Businessmen.
And Thomas Marlowe.
Her father.
Elena’s eyes filled.
Her father had not simply discovered the system.
He had become one of its targets.
She copied everything.
Then she noticed one encrypted video.
She clicked.
Password required.
A hint appeared.
ELENA’S FIRST SONG.
She smiled through tears.
Her father.
The music box melody.
She typed the title.
Unlocked.
Video.
Twelve years old.
Thomas Marlowe sat in what looked like a workshop.
“If Elena sees this, then I didn’t get the chance to explain.”
He looked terrified.
“The person behind the network is not Vittorio Moretti’s father.”
Elena leaned closer.
“It’s someone who benefits when the Moretti family becomes unstable.”
Thomas glanced toward a door.
“I found payments from a shell company called Orpheus Holdings.”
He held up a document.
“The owner is—”
The video froze.
Elena frowned.
Then the screen went black.
Someone had remotely interrupted the connection.
Impossible.
The bank laptop was supposed to be isolated.
An alarm sounded outside the vault.
Elena stood.
“Vittorio?”
No answer.
She grabbed the flash drive.
The vault door opened.
A man she had never seen stood outside.
Not Vittorio.
Not Marco.
He wore a bank security uniform.
He looked at the flash drive in Elena’s hand.
Then at her.
“Ms. Marlowe.”
May you like
He smiled.
“Celia Grant would like her property back.”
