Chapter 3 - The Traitor Within
The call disconnected with a sharp click.
Dead tone.
“Trace it?” I asked the tech, who had sprinted into the study behind Marco.
“Proxy-routed through twelve different offshore servers in the Cayman Islands and St. Petersburg,” the tech shook his head, sweating profusely. “It’s a ghost signal, boss. They’re bouncing it off a satellite uplink.”
I dropped the crystal paperweight onto the desk and turned to Marco. “Lock down the entire estate. Nobody leaves. Not a single guard, not a single chef, not a single maid. Seal the perimeter gates, jam all cellular frequencies, and bring every staff member up to the grand ballroom.”
“On it,” Marco barked into his shoulder comms.
Ten minutes later, fifty-four members of my household staff—cooks, maids, security guards, drivers, and nannies—were gathered in the cavernous expanse of the grand ballroom. Crystal chandeliers cast a brilliant, uncompromising light across their anxious, pale faces.
Elena, Sophie’s mother, stood near the front, her hands wringing nervously in the pockets of her apron, pulling little Sophie close to her side. Sophie was still clutching her ugly button-eyed doll, staring up at me with wide, unblinking eyes.
I stood at the head of the mahogany staircase overlooking the room, my hands resting casually on the polished wooden banister. Marco and ten heavily armed enforcers formed a semi-circle behind me.
The absolute silence in the room was heavy enough to crush bone.
“One of you,” I began, my voice carrying effortlessly across the vaulted ceiling, “allowed a listening device and an ultrasonic transmitter into my children’s nursery.”
A collective gasp rippled through the crowd. Whispers broke out among the maids, but a single glare from Marco silenced them instantly.
“You eat at my table. You sleep under my roof. You accept my protection,” I continued, walking slowly down the staircase, my boots clicking like a death knell against the marble floor. “And yet, someone decided to sell out my family for a paycheck.”
I stopped pacing when I reached the center of the room. I scanned every face, looking for the microscopic micro-expressions of guilt—a twitching eyelid, a shallow breath, a nervous shift in weight.
“Elena,” I said softly.
The housekeeper flinched, pulling Sophie even closer. “Mr. Moretti? I... I swear to God, I don't know anything about this! We just clean the rooms! We would never—”
“I’m not talking about you, Elena,” I interrupted, my eyes shifting past her to the second row of guards standing near the catering doors. “I’m talking about the man standing behind her.”
All heads whipped around.
Guard Miller—one of my senior residential guards, a man who had served under me for four years—suddenly bolted toward the side exit, reaching beneath his jacket for a suppressed automatic weapon.
He didn't even take two steps.
Marco’s pistol barked once. A deafening crack echoed through the ballroom.
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Miller dropped his weapon, screamed as a bullet tore through his right knee, and collapsed hard onto the marble floor, clutching his leg in agony.
Two guards were on him in a fraction of a second, pinning his face to the cold stone and stripping away his sidearm.
