Chapter 6 - THE MORNING COUNCILThe pale morning light cut through the fog outside the lighthouse window like a razor blade.
I stood by the counter, nursing a cup of black coffee I’d brewed from the safe house supplies, while keeping one eye on the computer monitors.
On screen, the Grand Ballroom of the Duca mansion was packed. The high-ranking capos of the syndicate—men whose names were whispered in fear across the entire eastern seaboard—sat around the massive circular table. At the center stood Elena, wearing a sharp black mourning suit that looked more like military commander attire than grief-stricken wear.
Marco stood just behind her right shoulder, his arms crossed, scanning the room with a hawk-like gaze.
“As acting head of this family,” Elena’s voice rang crystal clear through our audio feed, “I declare Lorenzo’s death an unfortunate tragedy. But business must continue. The shipping lanes in the harbor are ours, and the narcotics pipeline from South America remains uninterrupted.”
A heavy murmur rippled through the capos. Old man Salvatore, the most respected boss of the inner circle, leaned forward.
“And the body, Elena? If Lorenzo is truly dead, where is he? You don’t take the throne without proof.”
Elena’s expression didn't even flicker. She was a master actress. “Rico’s men are combing the coastline as we speak. The tide must have swept him out to sea. But make no mistake—he is gone.”
“She’s lying through her porcelain teeth,” a raspy voice muttered behind me.
I spun around. Lorenzo was standing by the desk. He was still pale, and leaning heavily against the back of a chair for support, but his dark eyes burned with an icy, terrifying focus. He had thrown a black tactical jacket over his bandaged chest.
“You shouldn’t be out of bed,” I said, stepping forward. “Your stitches will tear.”
“If I stay in bed, my sister will sell off everything my father built to a cartel in Sicily by noon,” Lorenzo replied, his voice flat and dangerous. He walked over to the console, tapping a sequence of keys that brought up a secondary camera feed—one hidden deep inside the mansion’s walk-in vault.
“What is that?” I asked.
“The family ledger,” Lorenzo said grimly. “The real one. Not the sanitized records Elena is showing the capos. Every offshore account, every bribe paid to federal judges, every dirty dollar is logged right here. And more importantly…”
He zoomed in on a specific digital folder labeled PROJECT JANUS.
“What is Project Janus?”
“It’s the evidence proving Elena didn’t just conspire with Marco to kill me,” Lorenzo whispered, his jaw clenching so hard a muscle twitched in his cheek. “She’s been secretly selling our distribution routes to our fiercest rivals—the Moretti syndicate—for the last eighteen months. She was going to bankrupt the family from the inside out and blame it on me.”
On the main monitor, old man Salvatore was pressing Elena further. “We need proof, Elena. The council won’t back a coronation without proof.”
Lorenzo looked at me, a strange, grim smile touching the corner of his mouth.
“Clara,” he said quietly. “How good are your hacking skills?”
“My what?” I stared at him. “I told you, I was in nursing school before my husband died. I’m a maid, not a cyber-terrorist.”
“You don’t need to be a hacker,” Lorenzo said, sliding a secure satellite uplink drive across the desk toward me. “You just need to walk into the estate’s main broadcast room and plug this into the master terminal while I make a little public appearance.”
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My breath caught in my throat. “Walk back in there? Are you insane? They’re hunting us! Marco has checkpoints on every road!”
“They’re hunting ghosts,” Lorenzo corrected, pulling a sleek, matte-black communications headset over his ear. “And ghosts are very hard to kill when they crash their own funeral.”
