Chapter 4 - THE SHADOW IN THE VAULT
Dante did not hesitate.
He gripped Isabella's wrist and pulled her into the back of the armored Mercedes.
"Lock the doors, Marco," Dante barked, jumping into the front passenger seat.
The heavy doors sealed with a hydraulic thud.
The interior was warm, smelling of expensive Italian leather and tobacco.
Isabella huddled against the door, shivering violently in her soaked clothes.
She did not look at Dante in the rearview mirror.
The car tore up the private driveway, tires throwing rooster tails of mud.
They arrived at the mansion within thirty seconds.
The great oak doors were wide open.
Inside, two guards lay groaning on the floor of the private study.
Broken glass from display cases covered the antique Persian rugs.
Aunt Sophia sat in a leather armchair, clutching an ice pack to her temple.
Her face was white as bone.
Her red lipstick was smeared across her chin.
Dante strohed into the room like an incoming storm.
"Where is he?" Dante roared.
Sophia flinched, shrinking back into the leather cushions.
"Carlo..." she stammered, her voice shaking.
"Carlo said you were under federal investigation."
"He told me the sapphire necklace was marked by the FBI."
Dante stopped in front of his aunt.
His shadow swallowed her completely.
"You told me it was your mother's heirloom," Dante said with terrifying calm.
"It was," Sophia whimpered.
"Then why did you help him put it in Isabella's bag?"
Sophia looked at Isabella standing in the doorway, soaked and bleeding from the gravel cuts.
A tear cut through the powder on the older woman's cheek.
"Carlo said she was an informant," Sophia whispered.
"He said she was passing financial records to the U.S. Attorney."
"He said if we put the necklace in her purse, we could search her legally and find her flash drives."
"There were no flash drives in my purse, Sophia," Isabella said from the door.
Her voice was like dry paper.
"Only my car keys and my brother's medical invoices."
Sophia buried her face in her trembling hands.
"He lied to me," Sophia sobbed.
"He took the master ledger from the wall safe behind the painting."
"The ledger containing the offshore accounts in Geneva."
Marco walked out of the walk-in vault, holding a heavy magnifying glass and a jeweler's loupe.
In his other hand was the sapphire necklace recovered from Isabella's bag.
"Boss," Marco said quietly.
Dante turned. "What?"
Marco held the deep blue stone under the desk lamp.
He scratched the surface with a diamond-tipped scribe.
A long, chalky white groove appeared on the gem.
"Glass," Marco said.
"Synthetic spinel with cobalt coating."
"Worth forty dollars at a flea market."
"The real Moretti sapphire was the Star of Palermo," Isabella said, taking a step into the room.
Her voice drew every eye.
Before she had met Dante, Isabella had spent six years as a senior conservator at the Art Institute of Chicago.
She knew stone.
She knew cut.
She knew light.
"The Star of Palermo wasn't just a family heirloom," Isabella said, looking at Dante.
"The pavilion of that stone was laser-etched with the seven-part cryptographic key for the Moretti trust in Zurich."
"Whoever holds the real sapphire holds ninety million dollars in bearer bonds."
Dante looked at her, his eyes wide with dark shock.
"How do you know that?" Dante asked.
"Your father told me," Isabella replied coldly.
"Three weeks before he died in the hospital."
"He told me that if you ever became too blind to see the snakes in your own garden..."
She looked at Sophia, then around the shattered room.
"...I was supposed to take the key and run."
Suddenly, the house's exterior power died.
The chandeliers went black.
Emergency red backup lights flickered to life along the baseboards.
A deep acoustic thud vibrated through the floorboards.
Downstairs, in the courtyard, automatic gunfire erupted.
The heavy security gate alarms shrieked into the stormy night.
Marco drew his weapon instantly.
"Breach at the lower perimeter!" Marco yelled.
Dante lunged toward Isabella, shoving her behind his heavy frame.
"Stay behind me!" he ordered.
May you like
The reinforced glass window of the study shattered inward in a shower of deadly shards.
A flash-bang grenade tumbled across the Persian rug, hissing with blinding white sparks.
