Chapter 10 - THE DOCKS AT TWO A.M.
When I burst into Adrian's study holding the vibrating phone and the locked briefcase, he was standing over a blueprint of the city harbor with Marco and four of his top lieutenants.
The room instantly went on high alert, two men reaching under their jackets toward their sidearms before Adrian raised a commanding hand to stop them.
"Anna?" Adrian stepped forward, his eyes immediately dropping to the phone in my trembling hand. "What did you find?"
"Victoria wasn't working alone, Mr. Moretti," I said out of breath, placing the vibrating phone and the locked briefcase directly on top of the harbor blueprints.
"She had a hidden wall safe in her closet. This phone went off two minutes ago. Read the screen."
Adrian picked up the burner phone, his jaw tightening into iron as he read the message from 'The Architect'.
"Initiate protocol B and take the girl."
A terrifying, lethal silence fell across the office, the kind of silence that precedes an artillery strike.
Adrian didn't curse; he didn't throw anything; his entire demeanor became frighteningly, mathematically calm.
"Marco," Adrian spoke without looking up from the screen.
"Yes, boss."
"Lock this estate down under Class-One protocol. Nobody enters, nobody leaves, sniper teams on the roof, infrared sweeps on the forest perimeter every five minutes."
He turned his dark, intense eyes squarely onto me.
"Anna, you take Lily down to the panic room beneath the wine cellar. There is an independent air filtration system, satellite communications, and three days of supplies. You lock the blast door from the inside and do not open it for anyone—not even for me—unless you hear three distinct knocks followed by Sarah’s maiden name."
"Understood," I answered, feeling the adrenaline surging through my veins.
"Where are you going?"
Adrian picked up a heavy black pistol from the desk drawer, checked the magazine with a smooth, practiced motion, and slid it into the shoulder holster beneath his jacket.
"The Architect says their shipment clears the docks at two in the morning," Adrian said, his voice dripping with absolute coldness.
"I believe it's time I personally greet our business partners and find out who paid for the bullet meant for my child."
Within ten minutes, I had gently woken Lily, wrapped her in a warm wool blanket, and escorted her through the hidden stone doorway behind the wine cellar into the fortified panic room.
As the massive reinforced steel door sealed shut with a hydraulic hiss, the heavy mechanical locks slid into place, isolating us completely from the surface world.
Lily sat quietly on the sofa inside the bunker, clutching her rabbit, her eyes reflecting the dim emergency lighting.
"Anna?" she whispered, looking up at me as I checked the monitor displaying the estate's external perimeter cameras.
"Yes, Lily?"
"Is my dad going to come back?"
I looked at the security feed showing Adrian’s black SUV convoy speeding away through the rain-slicked gates into the darkness of the city.
"Your father is fighting for your mother tonight, Lily," I replied gently, sitting beside her and wrapping an arm around her trembling shoulders.
"And a man like Adrian Moretti never loses when he’s fighting for the people he loves."
Meanwhile, twelve miles away at the industrial docks, the rain was pounding against rows of towering shipping containers.
Adrian’s vehicles arrived with their headlights switched off, coasting silently into the shadows of Pier 44.
A massive cargo freighter from Eastern Europe was docked along the pier, its crane unloading a single, unmarked white container onto the bed of a waiting flatbed truck.
Standing beside the truck were six heavily armed men wearing tactical gear, surrounding a tall figure in an expensive tailored trench coat holding an encrypted tablet.
Adrian stepped out of the shadows, flanked by Marco and a dozen silenced assault rifles aimed straight at the loading bay.
"You have terrible taste in business partners, Dominic," Adrian’s voice sliced through the roar of the wind and rain.
The man in the trench coat spun around in shock, the tablet slipping from his fingers and shattering against the wet concrete.
It was Dominic Vance—Adrian’s own chief financial officer, and the very man who had managed the Moretti family’s legitimate offshore trusts for the last fifteen years.
Dominic stared at Adrian as if looking at a vengeful demon pulled straight from the depths of hell.
"Adrian... how did you... Victoria was supposed to handle you tonight," Dominic stammered, backing toward the truck as his armed mercenaries raised their weapons.
May you like
"Victoria is currently in a concrete basement singing like a canary," Adrian answered coldly, raising his hand into the air.
"And your shipment just got canceled permanently."
