Chapter 37 - The Voice in the Wire
Across the control room, the emergency communications speaker built into the main console suddenly crackled to life, emitting a burst of static before a smooth, chillingly familiar voice echoed through the room.
“Impressive, little architect. I always knew my mother’s maid raised a remarkably resilient daughter.”
Leo froze. He stepped away from the doorway, his carbine leveled directly at the comms speaker. "Dante."
“Ah, brother,” Dante’s voice purred smoothly through the speaker, carrying the tone of a man lounging in a luxury penthouse rather than a maximum-security Alpine monastery. “You thought locking me away in Montenegro would silence the ledger? A Moretti never truly dies, Leo. We merely change our form.”
"You're locked behind three feet of reinforced titanium and twenty guards who answer to my payroll," Leo said, his voice dropping into an icy growl. "How did you route a signal through our provincial grid?"
“Money buys men, Leo. But brilliance buys systems,” Dante replied, laughing softly on the other end of the line. “You thought the Corsican plane crash was a hoax designed by Valentina? It was designed by me. I engineered the entire succession strategy before we were even old enough to walk. Valentina was just a pawn in my architecture.”
Sophia stood up slowly from the console, her eyes fixed on the comms speaker. She didn't look scared; she looked intensely analytical. She pulled a secondary tracing diagnostic tool from her pocket, plugging it directly into the comms line interface.
"He’s not routing from Montenegro," Sophia whispered rapidly to Leo, her fingers flying across her tablet. "The signal bounce is too clean. He’s using a satellite relay."
"Where is it coming from, Sophia?" Leo demanded.
"Tracing... tracing..." Sophia muttered under her breath, watching the geolocation vectors triangulate on her screen. "The relay isn't in Europe. It’s bouncing off a maritime research vessel currently anchored in international waters... just five miles off the coast of Sicily."
“Too late, sweet Sophia,” Dante’s voice sang through the speaker, laced with dark amusement. “The substation was never the true target. It was a distraction to draw you out of your fortress.”
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Suddenly, the encrypted tactical radio clipped to Leo’s shoulder burst into life. Marco’s frantic voice cut through the static:
“Boss! Boss, come in! We're under attack at the estate! An assault team just breached the eastern courtyard using heavy explosives! They're hitting the main house!”
