Chapter 3 - The Dead Man’s Call
Marcus Vance slammed the oak door of the ground-floor security study behind him, breathing heavily. The room was dark, illuminated only by the flickering green and blue light of twelve wall-mounted monitors displaying various camera angles of the Moretti estate.
"Damn it," Marcus muttered under his breath, his hands flying across the keyboard to access the local backup server. "Why did the main feed drop? Someone bypassed the master firewall."
He clicked through folders, bringing up camera Sector 4: the long service hallway behind the main kitchen.
The video loaded. The timestamp showed 15 minutes ago.
On the screen, the hallway was quiet and dimly lit. For a minute, nothing happened. Then, a figure stepped into the frame from the kitchen entrance.
Marcus leaned closer to the monitor, squinting in the dim light.
The man was wearing a standard black catering uniform, identical to the dozen servers working the party tonight. He had a Bluetooth earpiece in his ear and was holding a sleek, modern smartphone. He stopped right outside the pastry prep room—the exact spot where Lily Romano had been hiding.
The man on the screen turned his head slightly toward the camera, and the overhead light caught his profile.
Marcus gasped, stumbling backward against the edge of the mahogany desk.
"No... that's impossible," Marcus whispered, his heart hammering violently against his ribs.
On the screen, the catering worker pulled off his cap, revealing a face everyone in the Moretti empire knew by heart. It wasn't some low-level kitchen hand. It was Julian Vance—Marcus’s own younger brother, who was supposed to be managing the shipping docks across town.
Before Marcus could reach for his gun, the study door slowly creaked open behind him.
A cold, heavy muzzle pressed directly against the back of Marcus’s neck.
"Looking for something, uncle?" a smooth, chilling voice whispered.
Marcus froze, his hands hovering over the keyboard. He didn't need to turn around to recognize the voice. It belonged to David Vance—Marcus’s nephew and Julian’s son.
"David..." Marcus choked out, his voice trembling with a mixture of betrayal and horror. "What have you done? You put a bomb in a child's cake? Have you lost your mind? Alessandro will skin us alive—he’ll burn the entire family name to ash!"
David chuckled softly, a dark, venomous sound. "That's the plan, Uncle Marcus. The old man has ruled long enough. He's grown soft, shackled by sentimentality and ghosts of dead wives. The syndicate needs a new king. And the Russian Syndicate offered a very generous price for the throne."
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On the monitor, the countdown timer on the cake reached 01:05.
Marcus tried to lunge for the alarm button on the desk, but David was too fast. A heavy blow from the butt of a pistol crashed down across the back of Marcus’s head, sending him sprawling unconscious onto the polished hardwood floor.
