Chapter 7 - Uncovering the Buried Ledger in the Winter Garden
With a violent crunch of metal, Enzo slammed the armored SUV in reverse, smashing through a shooter's vehicle and spinning the car around before accelerating through the smoking wreckage.
Dante rolled down his window two inches, returning fire with lethal, pinpoint accuracy. Two attackers collapsed on the asphalt before the SUV rocketed out of the kill zone and sped onto the open expressway.
Sirens wailed in the distance as police cruisers converged on the blast site, but Enzo took the back exits, steering the smoking, bullet-riddled vehicle safely back toward the Lake Forest compound.
Inside the car, Sienna was shaking uncontrollably, her hands covered in soot. Dante grabbed her face with both hands, checking her frantically.
“Are you hit? Sienna, look at me! Are you hurt?”
“N-no,” she choked out, looking at his white dress shirt, which was soaked in dark crimson along his left arm. “Dante, you’re bleeding!”
“It’s a graze. It doesn't matter.” Dante pulled her against his chest, holding her with a ferocity that stole her breath. “You’re alive. That’s all that matters.”
Back at the estate, the fortress went into full lockdown. While the estate doctor stitched Dante’s arm without anesthesia, Dante’s intelligence team traced the ambush.
“The phone call from Dr. Miller was spoofed,” Enzo reported grimly. “They hacked the clinic's landline to lure her out. And they knew our exact route through the underpass.”
“We have a traitor inside our inner circle,” Dante growled, his voice vibrating with lethal fury.
Later that evening, while wandering the estate's glass-domed winter garden to clear her head, Sienna noticed something odd. One of the marble planters near the rear exit was disturbed, fresh soil scattered across the polished floor.
Kneeling down, she brushed the dirt aside and found a small, waterproof black ledger tucked behind the roots of an exotic fern.
Opening it, her breath caught.
The pages contained encrypted transaction logs, bank account numbers in the Cayman Islands, and lists of shipments signed with a distinct insignia—the mark of Alberto Rossi, Dante’s own second-in-command and chief financial officer.
Rossi was feeding Santoro intelligence to orchestrate a coup within the Valente family.
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Footsteps clicked on the marble behind her.
Sienna whipped around, clutching the book to her chest, only to find Dante standing in the entryway, his arm bandaged, watching her in the moonlight.
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