Chapter 14 - The Voice in GenevaThe screen flickered with heavy static before clearing into a crisp, high-definition video feed.
The room on the other end was dark, luxurious, and smelled of old money and European tobacco. A man sat in a high-backed leather chair, his face entirely shrouded in shadows. Only a heavy gold signet ring on his right hand caught the dim light—a ring bearing the crest of the Iron Crown, the oldest and most ruthless elite faction of the global syndicate.
“Well, well,” a smooth, aristocratic European voice purred from the speakers. “It appears Alistair Vance was even more incompetent than I anticipated. I expected better from a disgruntled architect.”
“Who is this?” I demanded, leaning over the terminal, my voice a low, lethal growl. “You have ten seconds to give me a name before I hunt down every asset you have on this continent.”
The man in the shadows chuckled softly—a dry, chilling sound.
“My name is irrelevant, Mr. Moretti. What matters is your inventory. Those triplets of yours... they possess a genetic anomaly that the Iron Crown has spent thirty years trying to isolate. Vance and Elena were merely our subcontractors.”
“Subcontractors,” I repeated, my fingers curling into a tight fist. “They tried to blow up my home.”
“And they failed because you were lucky,” the voice replied, growing sharper. “But luck is a finite resource, Adrien. You think you’ve won because you cleared out a basement cistern? You’ve only just stepped onto a much larger chessboard. The package we wanted... we will still get it. One way or another.”
“Try it,” I snapped. “And I’ll burn your entire global network to the ground, piece by piece.”
“A bold threat from a man who doesn't even know who is watching his front gate right now.”
The video feed abruptly went black.
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At that exact second, the security monitors on my desk flared to life.
Down at the main entrance gates of the estate, a convoy of three matte-black SUVs had just pulled up, their headlights cutting through the morning fog.
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