Chapter 6 - THE LIE THAT DESTROYED TWO LIVES
Dante raised his weapon.
“Choose your next words carefully.”
The stranger didn't move.
“My name is Ethan Cole. I worked security for Alessandro Moretti.”
Marco recognized the name.
“Cole disappeared after the funeral.”
Ethan nodded.
“Because I knew what happened.”
Dante kept his weapon trained on him.
“Explain.”
Ethan took a folded document from his coat.
It was an old security authorization.
Dante's signature appeared at the bottom.
The order instructed a driver to intercept Daniel Bennett's vehicle on the highway.
Sophia stared at the paper.
“No.”
Dante examined it.
“I never signed this.”
“That's what I told Daniel,” Ethan replied. “But he didn't believe me at first.”
“Who forged it?”
“Salvatore had access to the executive office. He copied your signature and used your authorization code.”
Dante lowered the weapon slightly.
“Why?”
“Because Daniel had discovered that Salvatore was using your company to move illegal shipments. He needed someone inside the family to take the blame.”
Ethan explained that Daniel had been taken to a remote medical facility after the crash.
Salvatore wanted him dead.
But Ethan had been ordered to oversee the transfer.
Instead, he helped Daniel escape.
“Why didn't Daniel contact Sophia?” Dante demanded.
“He tried. Every attempt was intercepted. Salvatore had people watching her apartment, her workplace, even the cemetery.”
Sophia remembered the strange cars parked outside her building.
The anonymous phone calls.
The feeling of being followed.
She had assumed grief was making her paranoid.
“Where is my husband now?” she asked.
Ethan looked at her.
“He was taken three days ago.”
“By whom?”
“Salvatore's men.”
Dante turned toward Marco.
“Get every available vehicle. I want the surrounding roads covered.”
Ethan shook his head.
“You won't find him that way.”
“Why?”
“Because Salvatore knows your security procedures. He's been inside your operation for years.”
Dante stared at him.
“Then how do we reach him?”
Ethan handed him a second document.
It contained a location and a time.
A private storage facility outside Newark.
“Salvatore wants a meeting,” Ethan said. “He'll exchange Daniel for the evidence.”
Dante studied the paper.
“That's a trap.”
“Of course it is.”
Sophia stepped forward.
“Then we'll go.”
Dante turned sharply.
“No.”
“Daniel is there.”
“And that's exactly why you're not going.”
“He's my husband.”
“And you're carrying his child.”
Sophia's eyes filled.
“You don't get to decide that the only way to protect me is to keep me helpless.”
Dante fell silent.
He looked at her swollen stomach.
Then at the woman who had spent two hours digging in the rain rather than lose the only job keeping her alive.
She wasn't asking him to rescue her anymore.
She was asking him to trust her.
“Fine,” he said. “But you stay behind the perimeter with Marco.”
They prepared the operation.
Before leaving, Dante confronted Victoria.
She had been placed under guard in the mansion.
“You're coming with us.”
Victoria looked frightened.
“Why?”
“Because Salvatore won't believe we're serious unless he sees you.”
She shook her head.
“He'll kill me.”
Dante's face remained cold.
“He might.”
“I'm your mother!”
“And Daniel was Sophia's husband.”
Victoria looked away.
For the first time, she seemed to understand the cruelty of what she had done.
At the storage facility, the gates opened at precisely 2:15 a.m.
Dante entered with Marco and two guards.
Sophia waited in the armored vehicle outside.
A voice came through the speakers.
“Welcome home, nephew.”
Salvatore Moretti appeared on a second-floor balcony.
He was in his late sixties, silver-haired, elegant, and smiling.
Beside him stood a man with his hands tied.
Daniel.
Sophia covered her mouth.
Her husband was thinner, his hair longer, a scar running along his jaw.
But he was alive.
“Daniel!”
He heard her voice through the open entrance.
His eyes widened.
“Sophia?”
Salvatore smiled.
“Touching, isn't it?”
Dante stepped forward.
“Let him go.”
“Give me the original records.”
“You know I don't have them.”
Salvatore laughed.
“Then perhaps we should discuss the alternative.”
He raised a remote control.
A loud metallic sound echoed from somewhere inside the facility.
Then every exit slammed shut.
Red lights began flashing.
Salvatore looked down at Dante.
May you like
“Welcome to your father's last mistake.”
And the floor beneath the men began to shake.
