Chapter 2 - The Photograph That Should Have Been Impossible“Isabella!”
My shout echoed through the mansion.
The call had lasted eleven seconds. By the time I ordered my men to trace it, the number had disappeared from the system. The recording contained a gunshot, a brief struggle, and Isabella's voice.
No location.
No useful background noise.
Nothing.
I played it seventeen times.
On the eighteenth, Marco reached across my desk and switched off the speaker.
“Enough, Dante.”
I stared at him.
“Touch my phone again, and I will break your hand.”
He withdrew slowly.
“I am trying to keep you focused.”
“Then find Adrian.”
“We are looking.”
“Look harder.”
Marco had been with my family for twenty years. He knew which enemies to negotiate with, which men could be bribed, and which problems required permanent solutions. He had stood beside me at my father's funeral and helped me take control of the organization before my rivals could divide it.
If I trusted anyone with the empire, it was him.
That was precisely why Isabella's warning frightened me.
The traitor had sat at my father's dinner table.
Marco had sat there too.
I pushed the thought aside. Suspicion without proof was how men like me destroyed everything they loved.
“Bring me the photograph from the west entrance,” I ordered.
A guard hurried out.
While we waited, I opened the security archive. The footage from the night Isabella disappeared had been erased from the mansion's main server. Our technicians recovered fragments from a backup drive.
At 10:09 P.M., Isabella appeared in the service corridor carrying a small black bag.
At 10:11, she walked past two guards.
At 10:12, a black sedan left through the north gate.
At 10:13, the camera feed froze.
Someone had removed precisely three minutes of footage.
Not a random failure.
A deliberate edit.
“Who had administrator access?” I asked.
“Six people,” Marco answered.
“Names.”
He listed five.
When I asked for the sixth, he hesitated.
“Your wife.”
I looked at him.
“Isabella had access to my security system?”
“She helped you organize the household network years ago. She knew passwords, schedules, and camera locations.”
Of course she did.
Isabella had once managed our household accounts, arranged security rotations, and quietly corrected mistakes my accountants missed. I had called it her talent for keeping the house running.
I had never considered that she understood the machinery behind my empire.
The recovered photograph arrived.
Adrian Cole stood beside the sedan, opening the passenger door for Isabella. His face was unmistakable.
But something else caught my attention.
Adrian wore his usual dark suit, except the jacket was buttoned incorrectly. His left sleeve was torn. On his wrist was a silver watch.
I zoomed in.
The watch belonged to my father.
I had seen it once in a family photograph taken the day before his murder. It was a limited-edition Patek Philippe, engraved with his initials.
The police had supposedly recovered it from my father's body.
I had kept it in a locked drawer for twelve years.
Marco leaned over my shoulder.
“That cannot be right.”
“What cannot?”
“The watch. We buried your father with it.”
I turned toward him.
“No. We buried him without it. I took it from his wrist before the funeral.”
Marco went pale.
It was a small reaction.
Almost invisible.
But I had been trained to notice the moment a man realized his lie had failed.
“Where were you on the night my father died?” I asked.
His eyes snapped toward mine.
“With him. You know that.”
“I know you told me you were in the second vehicle.”
“I was.”
“Then why did the original police report place you at the warehouse entrance twenty minutes before the convoy arrived?”
Silence filled the office.
Marco slowly straightened.
“That report was fabricated.”
“By whom?”
“I don't know.”
“Funny. Neither does anyone else.”
For the first time in twenty years, the man who had taught me how to intimidate others appeared uncertain in my presence.
My phone buzzed.
A message from an unknown sender contained a photograph of an old cassette tape.
On its label, someone had written three words in my father's handwriting.
DANTE MUST KNOW.
A second message arrived.
Ask Marco what happened at 11:40 P.M.
Before I could respond, the mansion's alarm sounded.
A guard burst into the room.
“Don, we found Adrian's car.”
“Where?”
“In the underground garage beneath the Russo family's hotel.”
My blood turned cold.
Valentina's hotel.
The same penthouse where I had spent forty-eight hours betraying my wife.
I reached for my coat.
Marco stepped in front of me.
“Dante, wait. If this is a trap—”
I pressed my forehead close to his.
“Then somebody is about to learn how expensive a trap can be.”
I walked past him.
At the door, I stopped.
“One more thing, Marco.”
“Yes?”
“If you know anything about my father's death, you have until I return to tell me.”
His face remained composed.
But his hand had closed around the inside of his jacket.
Where he kept his gun.
I left before he could decide whether to draw it.
Thirty minutes later, I stood inside the underground garage beneath Valentina's hotel.
Adrian's car was empty.
The driver's seat was wet with blood.
On the passenger seat lay Isabella's wedding ring.
Beside it was a note written in my wife's handwriting.
DANTE, IF YOU ARE READING THIS, MARCO HAS ALREADY LIED TO YOU.
Below the message was an address.
May you like
And beneath the address, five words that made my legs feel suddenly weak.
COME ALONE. TRUST NO ONE.
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