Chapter 11 - The Anomaly at Dock 4
The peaceful silence of the grand marble foyer was broken barely five minutes later by the sharp, persistent vibration of my tactical radio.
I stepped back from Luca, reaching instinctively for the encrypted comms unit clipped securely to my inner waistband. Luca lowered his hand from my lapel, his warm expression hardening back into the carved obsidian mask that the underworld of Chicago feared.
"Report, Mateo," I said into the microphone, my voice crisp and level.
"Chief, we’ve got a discrepancy on Berth 12," Mateo’s voice crackled through the earpiece, strained and tense. "Container 408-Echo from Rotterdam. The customs seal is intact, but the secondary biometric tag—the Moretti cold-chain lock—has been bypassed with a military-grade pulse decoder. It didn't trigger an alarm, but the micro-current log is dead."
I glanced at Luca. He had heard every word through the open channel.
"Has anyone approached the manifest?" Luca asked, his voice low and dangerous.
"Two dockworkers were scheduled to offload it five minutes ago," Mateo replied. "I flagged the crane operator and grounded the bay, but there’s something else. The shipping order wasn't signed by our broker in the Netherlands. It was cleared using an executive override from an internal terminal right here in the tower."
My stomach tightened. An internal override meant someone with senior access within Moretti Enterprises had cleared an unscheduled, tampered cargo container into our most secure port.
"Lock down Berth 12 immediately," I commanded, moving toward the private elevator without waiting for Luca’s command. "No one enters or leaves the terminal perimeter. Mateo, deploy team Beta with full ballistic gear. We’re on our way."
Luca fell into stride beside me, his tall frame radiating a chilling, focused lethal calm. He tossed his unfinished espresso into a polished brass receptacle, withdrew his tailored leather gloves from his pocket, and slid them onto his long fingers.
"Do you think it's remnants of Vanessa's network?" I asked as the elevator doors slid shut, sealing us in the rapid descent toward the underground motor pool.
"Vanessa was arrogant, ambitious, and cruel, but she lacked technical finesse," Luca said, his dark eyes fixed on the illuminated floor indicator descending rapidly. "She bought muscle and bribed greedy house staff. Hacking a quantum-encrypted biometric bypass requires specialized military infrastructure. Someone else is testing our perimeter."
When the doors opened onto the subterranean garage, four black armored SUVs were already idling in formation, exhaust curling into the cool air. Armed security personnel stood at attention.
May you like
Luca opened the passenger door of the lead Suburban for me, his touch lingering briefly on the curve of my waist. "Stay close, Sophie. If this is an ambush, they won't expect the head of my security to know how to suture an artery and shoot a sniper through the eye in the same breath."
A faint, sharp smirk crossed my lips as I drew my customized Sig Sauer from under my blazer, checking the chamber with practiced efficiency. "They definitely won't."
