Chapter 3 - THE HIDDEN LENS
An hour later, the study had been transformed into a command center.
The broken glass had been swept away. The wine stain on the Aubusson rug was covered by a heavy tarp. But the tension in the room could cut glass.
Alejandro stood by the window, a fresh glass of water in his hand, watching the autumn rain begin to streak the dark glass. Behind him, Dr. Vance—the private family physician who had been smuggled into the estate through the service gates—was packing his medical bag.
“The epinephrine saved your life, Mr. Moretti,” the doctor said quietly, adjusting his glasses. “Another sixty seconds without intervention and your airway would have completely scarred shut. It was a precise, acute dose of aconitine—plant-based neurotoxin. Fast-acting. Tasteless in heavy red wine. Whoever poured it knew your habits. They knew you drank a glass of Barolo at precisely four-thirty while reviewing the evening ledgers.”
“Thank you, Doctor,” Alejandro said without turning around. “Bruno will escort you out. Keep your mouth shut about the cause, or I’ll cut out your tongue myself.”
“Understood, boss,” the doctor muttered, grabbing his bag and hurrying out of the room.
When the door clicked shut, Bruno stepped out from the shadows near the bookshelf. His jaw was clenched so tight muscles rippled along his cheekbones.
“The staff has been locked in the west wing dining hall,” Bruno reported. “Phones confiscated. Interrogations starting now. Starting with the kitchen staff who handled the wine.”
“It wasn't someone in the kitchen,” Alejandro said coldly, turning away from the window.
Bruno frowned. “Boss?”
“Think, Bruno. The kitchen staff doesn't enter this study. The decanter was brought up at noon by Vincent. Sealed. Placed right here on the corner of my desk.”
Vincent.
Vincent Moretti. Alejandro’s cousin by blood, his chief of administrative operations by title, and the man who smiled the widest at every family dinner while whispering corporate strategies into the ears of rival syndicate leaders.
“Vincent?” Bruno’s eyes widened in disbelief. “Vincent has been with you for fifteen years. He’s family.”
“Family is the only kind of person close enough to slip poison into a glass without raising suspicion,” Alejandro replied, his voice dropping into a deadly, ice-cold register. “He thought he was clever. He knew I ordered the visible wall cameras in this room turned off three years ago. He thought he had complete blindness.”
Bruno took a step forward. “If he didn't use the wall cameras, how do we prove it? It’s his word against yours, and if we move on him without ironclad proof, the Commission will tear us apart from the inside.”
Alejandro walked over to the heavy oak bookcase behind his desk. He reached behind the ornate hand-carved molding near the top shelf, pressing a hidden micro-switch that only he and his late father knew existed.
Click.
A small, brass-plated panel on the side of the bookshelf slid open, revealing an older, independent analog recording unit wired directly into a backup generator—a relic from the 1980s that recorded on a secure, encrypted magnetic tape drive, completely isolated from the modern digital smart-home network.
“When my father built this house,” Alejandro said softly, pulling out a small black cassette tape, “he taught me one rule never to forget: Never trust a man who smiles too much, and never trust a camera that can be hacked.”
Bruno stared at the tape in absolute awe. “You kept an analog backup?”
“I did,” Alejandro said, tossing the tape into Bruno’s hands. “Take this down to the tech bunker. Play it on the old Sony deck. Let’s watch my cousin sign his own death warrant.”
Twenty minutes later, the two men stood in the basement security bunker, watching a grainy, black-and-white cathode-ray monitor mounted in the corner.
The timestamp in the corner read 4:12 PM.
The camera, cleverly hidden inside the brass decorative eye of an antique eagle statue mounted above the fireplace, provided a wide, sweeping angle of the entire desk.
The door opened.
Vincent Moretti walked in. He was wearing an impeccably tailored charcoal suit, his blond hair combed back with expensive pomade. He looked around the empty room, pulled a small glass vial from his inner vest pocket, uncorked it with his teeth, and tipped four dark drops directly into the open decanter of Barolo.
He didn't rush. He smiled—a thin, cruel, triumphant smirk—before recorking the vial, slipping it back into his pocket, and strolling out of the room as if he had just delivered a love letter.
Bruno let out a low, terrifying growl. His hand went instinctively to his shoulder holster.
“Give me the order, boss,” Bruno whispered, his eyes blazing with fury. “I’ll bring his head back on a silver platter before midnight.”
Alejandro stared at the frozen image of his cousin’s smiling face on the screen.
The grief of betrayal did not burn in him anymore. It hardened, turning into something ancient, dark, and absolute.
“No,” Alejandro said slowly, a dangerous, razor-thin smile touching his lips. “Killing him now is too merciful. Vincent wants my empire. He wants my seat at the Commission table. He thinks I’m dying in that room right now.”
May you like
Alejandro turned away from the monitor and looked up at Bruno.
“Let him think it.”
