Chapter 4 - Cleaning House
The rain outside the Moretti mansion had turned into a violent downpour, lashing against the reinforced glass windows as thunder shook the foundations of the estate. Inside the basement interrogation room—a soundproofed, concrete sanctuary that had seen the downfall of many traitors over the decades—Victor Hale and Isabella Romano sat tied to heavy steel chairs, their expensive clothes ruined by sweat, dust, and blood.
I stood across from them under the harsh glare of a single overhead fluorescent bulb, cleaning my hunting knife with a clean white cloth.
"The ledger, Victor," I said quietly, not looking up from the blade. "The physical one. Not the encrypted files on your laptop that I've already wiped, but the master ledger where you recorded every bribe paid to my capos, every shell company funneled through the Swiss banks, and every name of the Eastern Syndicate's inner circle."
Victor spat a mouthful of blood onto the concrete floor. His composure was completely gone now; the veneer of the dignified elder statesman had peeled away to reveal a desperate, terrified old man. "You're a dead man, Dante. Without our decryption codes, you won't even know which of your own men are loyal. The council meeting is in forty-eight hours. They're going to vote you out, strip your assets, and leave you bleeding in an alley."
I walked over, grabbed Victor by the collar of his ruined shirt, and hauled him upward until his face was inches from mine. "Forty-eight hours is plenty of time to bury a lot of traitors. Isabella?" I glanced at the woman sitting rigidly in the adjacent chair. Her blonde hair was disheveled, her designer dress torn at the shoulder, yet she still glared at me with pure venom. "You were always the ambitious one. Who in my capos is leading the execution squad?"
Isabella laughed, a sharp, hysterical sound. "You think I'll tell you? Go ahead, Dante. Torture us. Kill us. You'll walk into that council meeting completely blind, and you'll die believing your empire fell because of your own paranoia."
I smiled—a cold, humorless expression that didn't reach my eyes. "Who said anything about torture? I'm a businessman, Isabella. And I know how to negotiate." I turned my gaze back to Victor. "You spent three years downloading my strategic thoughts into the Eastern Syndicate's servers, which means your terminal still has an active, two-way encrypted tunnel back to their primary server in downtown Manhattan."
Victor’s eyes widened in sudden horror. "No... you can't—"
"I can," I interrupted smoothly. "And I will. I'm going to send a polite little broadcast to every single regional boss in the Eastern Syndicate, letting them know that their favorite asset has successfully broken his leash, and that his first order of business is paying them a personal visit."
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Before Victor could scream a warning, I turned to the secure terminal built into the concrete wall, plugged my encrypted master drive into the port, and initiated a deep-system trace. The screen flickered green, scrolling through thousands of lines of encrypted military-grade data, exposing every single double agent, every financial transfer, and every hidden safehouse in the tri-state area.
The purge had officially begun. And by the time the sun rose over the Moretti estate, the underworld was going to learn what happens when you try to control a monster that refuses to stay caged.
