Chapter 12 - The Ghost of Palermo
Within three minutes, the Falcone estate shifted from a birthday celebration into an impenetrable military garrison. Steel blast shutters slid down over the floor-to-ceiling windows with a heavy, hydraulic groan. Ruby, safely escorted to the fortified panic suite deep below the mansion, was happily eating chocolate strawberries under the watchful gaze of four submachine-gun-wielding guards, thinking it was all an elaborate game of hide-and-seek.
In the war room, Vincent stood before a massive tactical screen displaying live satellite feeds of the property. Beside him stood Angelo, the family’s veteran Consigliere, whose hands trembled slightly as he examined the silver comb sealed in evidence plastic.
"It is Caterina’s," Angelo whispered, his aging voice cracking with disbelief. "Vincent... I buried her with my own hands. I identified the remains in Sicily. The dental records matched."
"Then who dug her up?" Vincent growled, leaning his knuckles onto the illuminated glass table. His jaw was clenched so hard the tendons in his neck looked like steel cables. "Or worse... whose teeth did we bury, Angelo?"
"If someone kept her alive all these years..." Angelo swallowed hard. "Or if someone took this off her corpse before the coffin was sealed... it means the conspiracy that killed her wasn't an isolated ambush by the Morandi syndicate. It came from inside the Commission."
Marco burst through the double doors, holding an encrypted military tablet. "Don Vincent! We found the breach point in the west wall. The intruder didn't climb or tunnel. They used a master security bypass code issued only to three people: yourself, Don Angelo, and..."
Marco hesitated, terror flickering across his eyes.
"And who, Marco?" Vincent took one slow step forward. The air in the room grew suffocating.
"And your late wife, Donna Caterina," Marco finished, holding out the tablet. "The digital signature used at 2:14 PM was registered to Caterina Falcone's biometric security chip. A chip that was supposedly destroyed during her cremation."
Vincent stared at the green lines of code scrolling across the screen. Seven years of grief, seven years of raising Ruby alone while building an empire of blood to protect her, crashed over him like a tidal wave.
"She didn't come to kill Ruby," Vincent whispered, realization cutting into his soul like a shard of broken glass. "A sniper had Ruby in their crosshairs and didn't pull the trigger. They wanted me to know. They wanted me to remember."
Before Angelo could respond, the red landline on the war room wall—an analog circuit connected to no external server—began to ring. Its shrill bell echoed like a death knell.
Vincent picked up the receiver and pressed it to his ear without speaking.
May you like
A distorted, raspy voice drifted through the static: *"Did you think the crown looked pretty on her head, Vincent? Enjoy the celebration. Because by midnight, you will choose: the blood of your daughter, or the woman you left to burn in Sicily."*
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