Chapter 18 - An Unholy Alliance
The penthouse became a war room within the hour.
Laptops, satellite phones, and blueprints of the Port of Newark were spread across the marble dining table.
Matteo stood at the head of the table, his tuxedo jacket discarded and his sleeves rolled up, listening to three different phone lines simultaneously.
"Dominic Castiglione arrived at JFK three hours ago on a private charter from Rome," Marco reported, pinning a surveillance photo to the display board.
The man in the photograph was elderly, with snow-white hair, cold reptile eyes, and a tailored coat resting over his shoulders.
"He thinks Julian's death leaves our northern flank exposed," Matteo analyzed, staring at the photograph with predatory intent.
"He believes Alexandra's ledgers give him the backdoor codes to our liquidity pools."
"They don't," I spoke up, drawing the attention of every lieutenant in the room.
I walked over to the main terminal and pulled up the core architecture of the Apex servers.
"Julian thought he understood the mirror files he stole from my laptop," I explained, typing rapidly to bring up a complex wire diagram.
"What he didn't know is that I built a poisoned routine into the secondary nodes six months ago."
Matteo walked over and leaned against the edge of the desk, looking at the screen with intense fascination.
"What kind of poison, Alexandra?" he asked quietly.
"A self-executing trace program," I replied, looking up into his eyes.
"If Dominic Castiglione tries to access the offshore accounts using Julian's credentials, the program will lock the funds into escrow and broadcast his precise IP location to my terminal."
A low chuckle rumbled in Matteo's chest, his eyes flashing with pride and dark amusement.
"You didn't just keep yourself alive in that house of horrors," he said, shaking his head in admiration.
"You built an invisible cage around every monster who tried to touch you."
"Julian made the mistake of thinking my mind was broken because my body was bruised," I said coldly.
"Now Castiglione is about to make the exact same mistake."
Suddenly, the monitor on the far right let out a sharp, digital ping.
A red prompt began flashing across the screen: *ACCESS REQUEST INITIATED - NODE 77 - QUEENS MARALING YARDS.*
"He took the bait," Marco exclaimed, reaching for his weapon.
"Get the cars ready," Matteo commanded, turning toward the armory doors.
"No," I said, standing between Matteo and the door.
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"He didn't just access the server to steal money, Matteo."
"Look at the data packet he just uploaded."
