Chapter 7 - The Anatomy of a Frame
"Check the digital signatures on the flash drive, Boss," a voice called from the doorway.
Frank stepped into the dining room, his leather gloves still stained with alley grime, holding a ruggedized military laptop.
He set the machine beside the silver cutlery, plugging Antonio’s aluminum drive into the side port.
Lines of green cryptographic code began cascading down the black screen.
Julian didn't move a muscle, but a drop of cold sweat broke along his hairline and slid down his jaw.
"The transfer originated from an IP address inside the Moretti corporate tower in Uptown," Frank reported, his eyes glued to the decryption logs.
"Timestamp: four years ago, May 14th, at two o'clock in the morning."
"The exact night Madison signed the divorce decree in your study."
"Who logged into the mainframe, Frank?" I asked, my thumb resting heavily on the Glock's hammer.
"Security badge number 0-4-9," Frank answered without hesitation.
"Julian Moretti."
Silence swallowed the room like an abyss.
Vincent gasped, stumbling backward out of his chair again.
"Julian... you son of a bitch," Vincent stammered, his face pale with shock.
"You framed her?"
"You put cartel heat on Dominic's wife?"
Julian closed his eyes for a single second, inhaling deeply through his nose.
When he opened them, the corporate mask had dissolved completely.
All that remained was pure, unadulterated hatred.
"She wasn't his wife anymore!" Julian spat, his voice dropping an octave into a guttural snarl.
"She was a liability!"
"She was an outsider from Highland Park with high-society morals who turned Dominic soft!"
Julian suddenly stood up, defying the gun pointed at his head.
"Look at what he did for her!" Julian shouted, gesturing violently toward me.
"Four million dollars wired clean!"
"Offshore trust funds!"
"A prime estate!"
"He was bleeding family reserves to let an architect walk away with our secrets!"
"She walked away with nothing that belonged to the syndicate!" I bellowed, stepping forward until the cold steel of the barrel pressed hard into Julian’s cheekbone.
"She took what was legally hers!"
"She didn't know anything about the syndicate until the night before the split," Julian hissed, venom dripping from his mouth.
"She walked into your private office while you were at the docks dealing with the Colombians."
"She found the ledger."
"She found the manifest of the port shipments."
"And she found my private agreement with the Sinaloa federation."
The puzzle pieces that had haunted me for four agonizing years suddenly slammed together with bone-shattering clarity.
Madison hadn't fallen out of love with me.
She hadn't grown tired of the bodyguards, the late nights, or the cold distance in my eyes.
She had walked into my office to surprise me, and she had discovered a death warrant bearing my name.
"The Sinaloa federation wasn't doing business with Moretti Holdings," I said, my voice dangerously calm, the realization chilling me to the bone.
"They were paying you to orchestrate an assassination."
"To clear the seat for you to take over the family."
Julian chuckled, a sickening, broken sound that bounced off the ornate plaster walls.
"You were old-fashioned, Dominic," Julian sneered, refusing to back down.
"You refused to touch fentanyl."
"You refused to let the cartels use our rail lines into Chicago."
"You were leaving hundreds of millions of dollars on the table every single quarter because of some archaic moral code your father drilled into your skull!"
"The Mexicans wanted an open highway through Texas."
"I was willing to give it to them."
"And then your little trophy wife walked into the study and downloaded the file."
"She had the dates, the names, the bank accounts, and the sniper coordinates."
Julian’s eyes burned with feverish pride.
May you like
"She was going to take it straight to you the next morning."
"So I paid her a visit at midnight."
