Chapter 11 - The Unseen Hand
Midnight arrived with a howling blizzard that rattled the reinforced glass of the penthouse windows.
Roman was asleep beside me, his breathing deep and even, one heavy arm draped possessively over my waist, pinning me securely against his chest. I lay awake in the dim glow of the city lights, my fingers tracing the silver scars along his forearm, feeling a profound, long-forgotten peace settling over my bones.
Then, from the nightstand on Roman’s side of the bed, his secure burner phone vibrated.
A single, muffled buzz against the mahogany.
Roman didn't stir; the painkillers the doctor had given him were heavy, pulling him into a rare, deep slumber he desperately needed.
I quietly slipped from beneath his arm, careful not to wake him. I rounded the bed and picked up the black, encrypted device.
Normally, I would never touch his operational phones. But the screen was flashing with a decrypted priority notification from Nikolai’s private server:
*FORENSIC DATA RECOVERY: JULIAN VANCE'S ENCRYPTED CLOUD COMPLETED.*
My curiosity—and the lingering dread from Julian's dying words—overcame me. *Look closer to home. The call came from inside the house.*
I swiped the screen. The biometric sensor read my thumbprint—Roman had registered me into his master database yesterday.
The file opened.
It was an audio recording. A wiretap intercepted by Vance’s personal comms device two weeks before the charity gala at the Harrington Grand.
I plugged in the small wireless earpiece resting on the nightstand and pressed play.
A distorted voice spoke first—Julian Vance. *"The price is settled. Fifty million. But I need the security codes to the Harrington service elevator and the private estate in the north. Roman’s firewall is impenetrable from the outside."*
Then, a second voice answered.
A woman's voice.
Refined. Elegant. Perfectly measured. A voice I had known every single day of my life. A voice that had comforted me when I cried about Roman's coldness over afternoon tea just last week.
*"The codes will be sent to your Swiss server by midnight, Julian,"* the woman said coldly. *"Kill the girl first. Make Roman watch her bleed. When he loses his mind and makes a mistake, eliminate him too. The Petrov inheritance will default entirely to me... and Chicago will finally belong to the rightful bloodline."*
My breath seized in my throat. The room spun violently, the walls closing in on me like a collapsing tomb.
The voice on the recording didn't belong to a rival mafia boss.
May you like
It belonged to my mother.
And before I could drop the phone in sheer terror, the red laser dot of a high-powered sniper rifle drifted through the frosted penthouse window, locking firmly onto the center of Roman’s sleeping chest.
