Chapter 2 - The File Named Domenico
Valentina snapped her fingers once.
“Nico. Inside. Lily stays with Rosa. Nobody leaves the estate.”
Men moved before Gerald could speak again.
Marco stepped toward her.
“You should destroy the card.”
Valentina looked at him.
“Why?”
“Because your uncle just threatened Lily over it.”
“That is exactly why I’m reading it.”
She walked into her father’s old study and locked the door behind Nico, Marco, and her security chief, Tomas Vale.
Gerald and Evelyn were kept separately downstairs.
The card went into an air-gapped laptop Tomas kept for sensitive evidence.
Three files appeared.
Two were encrypted blocks of numbers.
The third was audio.
DOMENICO_FINAL_01.
Valentina did not move.
Nico looked at her once, then away.
Her father had been dead eight years.
She clicked PLAY.
Static.
Then Domenico Carbone breathed into a microphone.
“If this fragment survived, Garden Seven was not compromised.”
Valentina’s hand tightened around the edge of the desk.
Marco stepped closer.
“What is Garden Seven?”
She looked at him.
“You tell me.”
“I’ve never heard of it.”
The recording continued.
“The archive cannot be trusted in one place. Nothing survives in one place. Not money. Not loyalty. Not truth.”
Domenico coughed.
He sounded weaker than Valentina remembered from his final weeks.
“Gerald is greedy.”
Nico exhaled through his nose.
Nobody was surprised.
“Greedy men can be bought. Greedy men can also be watched.”
A pause.
“Marco is patient.”
Silence filled the study.
Valentina did not turn immediately.
That would have been too easy.
She watched Marco’s reflection in the dark laptop screen.
His expression changed for less than a second.
Not shock.
Recognition.
Then it was gone.
Domenico’s voice returned.
“Fear the patient man.”
The recording ended.
Marco let out a short laugh with no humor in it.
“Your father distrusted everyone by the end.”
“He named two people.”
“He named one idiot and one man who spent thirty years keeping him alive.”
Valentina closed the laptop.
Marco’s hand stayed inside his jacket.
“Take it out,” she said.
His eyes narrowed.
“My hand?”
“Slowly.”
He pulled out his phone.
Screen black.
Valentina held out her palm.
Marco did not give it to her.
Nico shifted beside the bookcase.
That was enough.
Marco placed the phone in Valentina’s hand.
Tomas checked it.
“No active call.”
Valentina watched Marco.
“What did my father mean?”
“I don’t know.”
“You always know.”
“Not this time.”
A knock hit the study door.
Three hard taps.
Tomas opened it two inches.
A guard whispered something.
Tomas’s face tightened.
“What?” Valentina said.
“We found an outgoing call from Marco’s secondary line.”
Marco turned.
Valentina’s eyes stayed on him.
“When?”
“Three minutes after Lily touched the soda can.”
“To who?”
Tomas looked toward the hallway, then back at her.
May you like
“Evelyn.”
