Chapter 4 - THE SNAKE IN THE TOWER
Silence descended upon the room like a heavy blanket.
The small silver drive glittered under the soft chandelier light.
Dominic had possessed the drive for seven years, stitched right inside the collar of the dog he hated, without ever knowing it was right under his nose.
"My father," I whispered, tears finally overflowing and tracing hot paths down my cheeks. "My father hid it on Buster's collar before he died."
"He knew Dominic was coming for him," Enzo said, his voice dropping into a dangerous, dark octave. "He knew he wouldn't survive, so he hid the one thing that could destroy Dominic on the only creature Dominic wouldn't think to look closely at."
Enzo picked up the micro-drive, holding it tightly in his fist.
"This drive doesn't just have my family's old financial records," Enzo murmured, looking at me with a fierce intensity. "It has the proof of who murdered your father. And who has been stealing from my syndicate for the last decade."
"What are you going to do?" I asked, my voice trembling.
Enzo stood up, putting his suit jacket back on. "Tonight, nothing. You and Cerberus are staying here. No one enters this room without my permission. My personal bodyguards are outside the door."
He walked toward the door, then paused, looking back at me.
"I swore to protect my father's memory," Enzo said softly. "Now, I'm going to finish what your father started. Rest, Clara. Tomorrow, the Vance family line gets rewritten."
The next morning came far too quickly.
I woke up to the smell of fresh espresso. Enzo was sitting at the glass table near the balcony window, a laptop open in front of him, reading through thousands of encrypted lines of code. Cerberus was sitting right beside his chair, his head resting on Enzo’s knee.
It was surreal. The most dangerous mafia boss in the tri-state area was feeding my childhood puppy scraps of bacon under the table.
"Good morning," Enzo said without looking up from the screen. "You slept six hours."
"Is that... the drive?" I asked, walking over in my socks.
"Yes," Enzo said, his jaw clenching. "Your father was brilliant, Clara. He encrypted this with a double-tier algorithm. It took my best tech guy four hours to break it."
He turned the laptop screen toward me.
There were bank transfer records, wire receipts, and audio files dated seven years ago.
"Dominic didn't just kill your father," Enzo said grimly. "He was working with the Moretti family—our rivals. He poisoned your father with an undetectable digitalis derivative to make it look like a heart attack, hoping to steal the drive and sell my family's entire network to the Morettis for fifty million dollars."
My breath hitched in my throat. Rage, hot and blinding, surged through my chest. "He killed my dad..."
"And he’s been planning to overthrow me next month," Enzo added, his eyes burning with cold rage. "Dominic called a meeting tonight at the docks in Brooklyn. He thinks he’s meeting the Morettis to finalise a deal to take me out."
"Are you going to stop him?"
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Enzo shut the laptop with a sharp snap.
"No," Enzo smiled—a terrifying, predatory smile that sent shivers down my spine. "I'm going to let him set the stage. And then you, me, and Cerberus are going to crash his party."
