Chapter 10 - The Truth in the White Mountains
The cold mountain wind howled through the skeletal arches of an abandoned Byzantine monastery perched on the southern ridge.
We had abandoned the drainage ditch two miles back, climbing on foot through thorny scrub and jagged limestone cliffs.
Dante collapsed against an ancient stone altar inside the ruined chapel, his breathing ragged and shallow.
His tuxedo jacket was ruined, soaked through with thick crimson blood that refused to clot.
I dropped to my knees beside him, ripping off the emerald necklace and tossing it aside onto the stone floor.
Using my teeth and hands, I tore long strips of fabric from the hem of my ruined silk gown to make a tourniquet.
“Hold still,” I commanded, pressing the silk hard against the gaping entry wound below his ribcage.
Dante hissed in pain, his fingers gripping my wrist with bruising force, his forehead slick with cold sweat.
“You should have taken the money and stayed in the safehouse, Emily,” he rasped, his vision unfocusing.
“You are a terrible liar, Dante Moretti.”
“You knew I was never going to walk away from my father’s murderers.”
I pressed harder on the wound, packing the makeshift bandage until the bleeding slowed to a dark trickle.
He closed his eyes, his breathing stabilizing slightly as the shock subsided into dull, grinding agony.
Beside his hip lay the titanium flash drive he had snatched from the banquet table before the lights went out.
I picked it up, plugging it into the rugged field tablet Dante carried in his waterproof tactical belt.
The screen lit up, displaying a complex authentication prompt requiring a twelve-character alphanumeric key.
“Alberto’s programmers spent two years trying to crack that partition,” Dante whispered, barely opening his eyes.
“Thomas Hart created an encryption algorithm based on an obscure Ohio municipal code.”
I stared at the blinking cursor, memories of my father sitting at our kitchen table late at night flooding my consciousness.
Whenever he worked on sensitive audits, he had a habit of whistling an old college football fight song.
He had always told me that the most important dates in life were not anniversaries, but the days we made promises.
My fingers hovered over the keyboard.
I typed my father’s badge number, followed by the date he promised me he would leave the port authority: 0418-HART-PROMISE.
A soft electronic chime sounded from the tablet speakers.
The screen shifted, unlocking thirty gigabytes of encrypted files, video logs, and internal bank routing numbers.
My breath hitched as the primary folder header opened before my eyes.
It was not Alberto Moretti’s name at the top of the distribution tree.
The account funding the Mediterranean smuggling pipeline was registered to a holding company in Zurich.
And the sole authorized signatory on the Swiss bank account was a woman named Elena Moretti.
“Dante...” I whispered, my voice trembling as I turned the tablet screen toward him.
“Who is Elena Moretti?”
Dante’s eyes snapped wide open, the color draining completely from his face despite his fever.
“Elena was my older sister.”
“She supposedly died in a car bombing in Naples four years ago.”
“She is not dead,” I said, pointing to the transaction log showing wire transfers executed just forty-eight hours ago from Athens.
“She staged her own death, framed your uncle Alberto, and used my father to dismantle your entire family empire from within.”
Dante stared at the digital records of his sister’s signature, his world collapsing into the dust of the Cretan mountains.
May you like
Before either of us could speak, the distant thrum of heavy helicopter blades echoed across the valley below.
The searchlights swept across the ruined monastery roof, hunting the survivors of the night.
