Chapter 5 - The Enemy Inside Cipriani Tower
For five years, Ayla had visited an empty grave.
She had placed flowers beneath a stone engraved with Evelyn Morris’s name. She had sold her mother’s clothing, closed her bank accounts, and packed her photographs into boxes because seeing them hurt too much.
Now Evelyn stared from a monitor inside an armored vehicle.
Alive.
“Where is she?” Ayla demanded.
Victor’s voice remained calm.
“Closer than you think.”
“Let me speak to her.”
“You already have.”
The video ended.
At the same instant, control returned to the vehicle.
Sofia grabbed Ayla’s arm as she reached for the door.
“Wait.”
“My mother is alive.”
“And Victor wants you to react without thinking.”
Matteo’s voice came through the radio.
“Ayla, respond.”
“I’m here.”
“Are you safe?”
“Yes.”
“We found an empty control room. Victor triggered a remote data transfer.”
“I know.”
Her voice broke.
Matteo heard it.
“What happened?”
“Victor showed me my mother.”
Silence.
“She’s alive.”
Another pause.
Then Matteo said, “I’m coming to you.”
Within minutes, the team returned with the rescued prisoners.
Mabel’s brother was transferred to an ambulance. Daniel regained consciousness long enough to confirm Victor had visited the terminal two days earlier.
Matteo entered the command vehicle and found Ayla staring at the frozen image of her mother.
He dismissed everyone except Sofia.
“When did you know?” Ayla asked.
Matteo stopped.
Sofia looked between them.
“What is she talking about?”
“Victor said you knew.”
“Victor lies.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
Matteo’s silence gave her the answer.
Ayla stood.
“How long?”
“Ayla—”
“How long have you known my mother might be alive?”
“Three weeks.”
The betrayal struck with physical force.
“You knew before the gala.”
“I received an unverified photograph.”
“You received a photograph of my dead mother and said nothing?”
“I needed confirmation.”
“She is my mother!”
“She could have been bait.”
“She was bait. But that does not excuse you.”
Matteo stepped closer.
“Victor wanted you unstable.”
“You decided lying was better?”
“I decided protecting you was better.”
Ayla laughed bitterly.
“Protection again.”
“I could not let hope destroy you if the image was false.”
“And if it was real?”
“I intended to find her before telling you.”
“You intended to control the truth.”
Matteo flinched almost imperceptibly.
Sofia looked at her brother with disappointment.
“She’s right.”
“This does not concern you.”
“It concerns anyone who has watched you confuse love with authority.”
Matteo’s face closed.
Ayla removed her wedding ring.
His eyes followed the movement.
She placed it on the communications table.
“I cannot do this.”
“Ayla.”
“I spent six months wondering whether I could trust you. Tonight, I decided I could.”
“You can.”
“No. I can trust you to protect my body. I cannot trust you with my choices.”
She walked out into the rain.
Matteo did not stop her.
That hurt most.
Sofia drove Ayla to a secure apartment owned under an unrelated company name. Ayla refused to return to the penthouse.
At dawn, Mabel arrived.
Her makeup was gone, and she wore borrowed clothes from the hospital. Daniel was stable.
“I came to apologize,” she said.
Ayla stared at her.
“For which part?”
“All of it.”
Mabel looked down.
“Victor threatened my brother, but no one forced me to enjoy humiliating you.”
The honesty surprised Ayla.
“I spent my entire life believing proximity to powerful people made me valuable,” Mabel continued. “When I thought you were only an assistant, I treated you as though your dignity cost nothing.”
“Why?”
“Because I was afraid you had something I didn’t.”
Ayla almost laughed. “I had a seventy-nine-dollar dress and overdue rent.”
“You had Matteo’s attention.”
“You knew?”
“I saw the way he looked at you during a meeting months ago. He watched every person who approached you.”
Ayla looked toward the window.
“I thought he was assessing threats.”
“He was.”
Mabel smiled sadly. “He considered everyone near you a threat.”
The apartment door opened.
Luca entered with a tablet.
“We identified the leak inside Cipriani Tower.”
Matteo’s chief financial officer, Adrian Vale, had supplied Victor with security schedules, vehicle assignments, and private communications for nearly a year.
“Why?” Ayla asked.
“Victor has his daughter.”
Another hostage.
Another person turned into a weapon.
Adrian had disappeared after downloading Evelyn’s archive from the terminal.
The stolen data could expose every witness connected to Victor’s operation.
Worse, the list included locations.
People were already in danger.
Ayla studied the coding pattern.
“My mother added something.”
Luca leaned closer.
“What?”
“The archive did not transfer cleanly. These repeated numbers are deliberate errors.”
“A tracking sequence?”
“A message.”
Ayla rearranged the corrupted lines using a childhood cipher Evelyn had taught her.
The phrase appeared slowly.
THE TOWER HAS TWO HEARTS. TRUST THE ONE BELOW.
Luca frowned.
“Cipriani Tower?”
Ayla nodded.
“Matteo’s building has two server systems. The public network is aboveground. The original infrastructure is beneath the basement.”
“Only Matteo has access.”
“Then Victor wants us to believe.”
Luca called him.
Matteo arrived thirty minutes later.
He looked as though he had not slept.
His gaze found the wedding ring on the table before finding Ayla.
Neither mentioned it.
She explained the message.
Matteo took them beneath Cipriani Tower through a freight elevator requiring biometric access.
The hidden level had been built by Antonio Cipriani decades earlier.
Rows of dormant servers filled a circular chamber.
At its center stood an old steel safe.
Matteo entered his father’s personal code.
It failed.
Ayla examined the keypad.
“Try my mother’s birthday.”
Matteo looked at her.
“Why would my father use that?”
“Maybe they knew each other.”
The code worked.
Inside the safe were hundreds of documents, photographs, and cassette recordings.
One photograph showed Antonio Cipriani beside Evelyn Morris.
They were standing outside a courthouse twenty-five years earlier.
On the back, Antonio had written:
Evelyn agreed to help us destroy Soren from within.
Ayla sank into a chair.
Her mother had not been Victor’s loyal architect.
She had been an informant.
Matteo found a recording labeled FOR OUR CHILDREN.
He placed it inside an old player.
Antonio’s voice filled the chamber.
“If you are hearing this, Evelyn and I failed. Victor’s network reaches deeper than either of us understood. We built a duplicate archive beneath Cipriani Tower. It contains evidence of every transaction, shipment, bribe, and murder.”
Evelyn’s voice followed.
“Ayla, I am sorry for the lies that may become your inheritance. I wanted you far from this life. If I disappear, believe only this: I never stopped trying to return to you.”
Ayla covered her mouth.
Matteo stood beside her but did not touch her.
He was waiting for permission.
Ayla reached for his hand.
His fingers closed around hers.
The recording continued.
“The archive can only be opened with two keys,” Antonio said. “One held by my son. One held by Evelyn’s daughter.”
Matteo looked at Ayla.
Their marriage had not begun by coincidence.
Their parents had designed a final safeguard requiring them both.
Luca searched the safe.
“We have Matteo’s key.”
He held up a black metal disk.
“But where is Ayla’s?”
Ayla remembered the sewing box.
The key she believed opened only the safe-deposit box had contained a removable center.
She still had it inside her Queens apartment.
“I know where it is.”
They reached the apartment forty minutes later.
The front door was open.
Inside, every drawer had been emptied.
The sewing box lay smashed on the floor.
The key was gone.
On the wall, Victor had left another message.
BRING MATTEO’S KEY TO THE PLAZA AT MIDNIGHT.
COME ALONE IF YOU WANT YOUR MOTHER ALIVE.
Beneath the words was a fresh photograph.
May you like
Evelyn sat inside the Plaza Hotel’s abandoned underground ballroom.
A bomb was strapped to her chair.
