Chapter 4 - The Anatomy of a TrapThe air in the study felt heavy with the weight of old betrayals and fresh dangers. I traced the forged initials in my father’s ledger with the tip of my finger, feeling the rough texture of the paper beneath my nail.
"An empty casket," I repeated, my voice ice-cold. "You knew Viktor was alive."
"I suspected it," Alessandro admitted, leaning against the edge of the desk. He didn't look away from me, accepting my anger without flinching. "Three months ago, shipments arriving from our Antwerp contacts started registering anomalies in weight. A standard parcel of rough diamonds doesn't fluctuate by twelve kilograms unless someone is swapping the carbon for heavy contraband. I traced the discrepancy back to a dummy corporation registered under a shell company in the Cayman Islands. The signature on the incorporation papers matched Viktor’s handwriting."
Leah crossed her arms, pacing near the bookshelf. "So let me get this straight. Your psycho cousin faked his own death, took over a splinter faction of the Russian-New York syndicate, and started using your diamond shipping channels to smuggle explosives into Chicago?"
"And he used Camila as leverage," I added, looking toward the doorway where Camila was now standing quietly, clutching a cup of tea Leah had probably fetched her.
Camila stepped into the room, her eyes downcast, the faint purple bruise on her wrist stark against her pale skin. "I was an apprentice at the appraisal office in downtown Antwerp," she said softly, her voice barely audible. "Viktor found out my family had gambling debts with the Bratva. He forced me to carry the manifest codes into Chicago inside the lining of my dress. When I tried to refuse last night... when I saw how he was planning to use your dinner party as a distraction..."
She looked directly at me, tears welling in her eyes. "I'm sorry, Signora. I didn't want to ruin your birthday. I didn't want any of this."
I walked over to Camila and gently placed a hand on her uninjured shoulder. The girl flinched slightly before relaxing into the touch. I knew what it felt like to be trapped in a world carved out by violent men. My entire life had been defined by the perimeter walls of the Outfit, first by my father’s rules, and then by Alessandro’s crown.
"You're safe here, Camila," I said firmly. Then I turned back to my husband. "If Viktor is using the Antwerp pipeline to move explosives into the city, he has to store them somewhere close to the distribution hubs. The jewelry district downtown has subterranean vaults that haven't been opened since the city council rezoned the old tunnels in the seventies."
Alessandro’s eyes lit up with a dangerous, calculating light. "The old Masonic vaults beneath the 4th Street jewelry exchange. That’s where the shipping manifests point."
"Exactly," I said, reaching for my leather toolkit on the desk. "And there's only one person alive who knows the emergency combination lock for those vault doors—because my father designed them after the 1994 heist."
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Maso stepped forward from the shadows near the door, his hand resting on his weapon. "Signora, if Viktor is holed up down there with a stockpile of C4, walking into those tunnels is a suicide mission."
"It's only a suicide mission if you go in blind," I replied, opening my toolkit and pulling out a specialized laser-calibrated optic scope and a set of master tension wrenches. "Fortunately, I have the blueprint of every locking mechanism my father ever installed in this city. Alessandro, call your strike team. We're going underground."
