Chapter 3 - The Ghost Protocol
The rain had turned into a full-blown storm by midnight. Lightning flashed across the Manhattan skyline, casting jagged, skeletal shadows across the walls of the Moretti penthouse.
Downstairs, in the hidden sub-basement that served as the family’s war room, Aleandro stood before a bank of monitors. Sitting at the console was Elena Romano, the housekeeper. She wasn't just a maid; she was the widow of a Moretti soldier who had died protecting Aleandro’s father. She was fiercely loyal, and her daughter, Emma, was currently sleeping peacefully on a small cot in the corner of the room.
"She’s been making encrypted calls every twenty minutes since you left the office," Elena said, her fingers flying across a keyboard. She had tapped into the penthouse's internal router, bypassing the localized jammer Isabella thought she was using. "The signal is bouncing off a server in Langley. She isn't FBI, Aleandro. She’s CIA. Dark Ops."
Aleandro stared at the screen. A digital map showed the data packets leaving his penthouse and traveling to a secure facility in Virginia.
"The judge’s daughter," Aleandro muttered, a bitter laugh escaping his throat. "Her father didn't broker a truce thirty years ago because he wanted peace. He did it because he realized the Morettis were too big to crush from the outside. He raised his daughter to be the perfect trojan horse."
"What are we going to do with her?" Elena asked, looking up, her eyes hard. "She used my daughter. She lied to a child to protect her wire."
"She thinks she has the upper hand," Aleandro said, his eyes narrowing as he watched a live video feed of his office. Isabella was currently sitting at his desk, casually flipping through his personal ledger, entirely unaware that the camera hidden inside the smoke detector was recording her every move. "She thinks the Feds capturing that truck in Brooklyn was a victory. She doesn't know that I intentionally left those biometric files on that specific truck because I knew someone was leaking."
He walked over to Emma’s cot, looking down at the little girl. He gently smoothed a stray lock of dark hair away from her forehead. If not for this child, he would have married Isabella next month. He would have brought her into the inner sanctum of the Commission. He would have given her the names of the international suppliers. He would have handed her the keys to an empire, and she would have locked the cell door behind him.
"You saved my life, little one," he whispered.
He turned back to Elena. "Call Marco. Tell him to activate the Ghost Protocol. We aren't going to kill Isabella. Not yet. If we kill a CIA operative in the middle of Manhattan, the entire weight of the federal government will come down on the Moretti family. We are going to make her destroy herself."
Ten minutes later, Aleandro returned to the upper penthouse. He walked into the master bedroom, where Isabella was now lying in bed, reading a book. She looked so innocent, bathed in the soft glow of the bedside lamp, her hair falling loosely over her shoulders.
"Everything handled?" she asked, looking up with a warm smile.
"For now," Aleandro said, unbuttoning his vest and tossing it onto a chair. He climbed into bed beside her, pulling her close. He could feel her heart beating against his chest. It was a normal, steady rhythm. The heart of a sociopath.
"I was thinking about the honeymoon," Aleandro said carelessly, his hand tracing lines down her bare arm. "Forget Paris. Forget the Amalfi coast. I want to go somewhere private. Somewhere no one can find us."
Isabella’s eyes gleamed with interest. "Oh? Where?"
"My family owns a private island off the coast of Venezuela," Aleandro lied smoothly, watching her expression. "No cell service. No satellite coverage. It’s where my father used to store his gold before the Swiss accounts became popular. I have forty million dollars in bearer bonds sitting in a vault beneath the villa there. I think it’s time we bring it back to the States."
He felt the subtle shift in her muscle tension. The trap was set. He knew exactly what she would do. She would transmit this information to her handlers tonight. The CIA would scramble a covert team to intercept them in Venezuela, thinking they were catching the Mafia King with his hidden treasury.
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"That sounds wonderful, darling," Isabella whispered, leaning up to kiss him on the lips. The kiss was passionate, full of promise and deceit.
As she pulled away, Aleandro smiled into the darkness. "Good. We leave tomorrow morning. Just you and me."
