Chapter 46 Amelia
Amelia
I sit at the dining table with my laptop open. The drive I took from the warehouse is plugged into the port. I feel a rush of victory as the files begin to show on the screen. I have been back at the penthouse for an hour and I haven't even taken off my boots yet. My heart is still beating fast from the adrenaline of the raid. I am finally going to see the names of the buyers and the routes they use to move the drugs.
I click on the first folder labeled transit logs. I expect to see coded entries or encrypted manifests. Instead, I see perfectly clean records of industrial air filters. I frown and open the second folder. It is full of employee tax forms and insurance certifications for a legitimate logistics company. I scroll through the pages of data. Everything is too perfect. It is all standard and boring and completely legal.
I click on the folder for the south bay shipments. This was where the foreman said the high-value cargo was going. I open the document and my blood runs cold. It is a digital receipt for a delivery to a local hospital. I keep clicking, my fingers moving faster and faster as I search for a single scrap of evidence. I open the server logs and look at the timestamps. They match our arrival perfectly.
I stop clicking. I lean back in the chair and stare at the screen. The realization hits me like a physical blow to the stomach. There is no syndicate data here. There is no link to Ren Moretti. These files are a setup. The entire warehouse was a theater production staged just for me. The conversation I overheard about the crates was scripted. The guard I knocked out was probably a paid actor.
I have been had.
A white-hot rage starts to bubble up in my chest. I feel a pulse of heat in my neck and my hands start to shake. I have been playing a game against the Shadow and he just made me look like a complete amateur. I am a captain in the military and I fell for a bait and switch that a rookie should have seen coming.
"Is the data what you expected?" Luca asks.
He is standing in the doorway of the kitchen with a fresh cup of coffee. He sounds calm and curious. His voice is the spark that sets off the explosion in my head. I stand up so quickly that my chair flips backward and hits the hardwood floor with a loud bang.
"It's fake!" I scream.
I grab the laptop and slam it shut. I don't care about the hardware. I sweep my arm across the table and send the stacks of manifests and maps flying into the air. Papers flutter through the room like snow. I grab a heavy glass vase from the sideboard and hurl it at the wall. It shatters into a thousand pieces and the sound echoes through the penthouse.
"Amelia, calm down," Luca says. He starts to walk toward me with his hands raised.
"Don't tell me to calm down!" I yell. My voice is raw and I can feel the tears of frustration stinging my eyes. "Leave me the fuck alone, Luca! Just stay away from me!"
I grab a chair and shove it toward the window. I am pacing the room like a caged animal. I feel humiliated. I feel like the biggest fool in Italy. I have been running through the dark and bleeding for a lead that didn't even exist.
"He knew," I whisper, then I say it louder. "He knew I was coming! How did he know? How the hell did Ren Moretti figure out my plan before I even stepped foot on that dock?"
I look at Luca and I want to hit something. I grab a decorative bowl from the island and smash it on the floor at my feet. The ceramic shards fly everywhere. I am panting and my side is throbbing with every movement but I don't stop.
"I covered my tracks," I say. I am pointing a shaking finger at the scattered papers on the floor. "I used encrypted lines. I didn't tell anyone except you and Marco. He shouldn't have known I was there. He shouldn't have been able to scrub a whole warehouse so quickly."
Luca stops a few feet away from me. He looks at the mess I made and then he looks at my face. He doesn't look angry. He just looks worried.
"Moretti has eyes everywhere, Amelia," he says quietly. "He is a called the Shadow for a reason."
"That isn't good enough!" I scream. I feel a sob building in my throat but I choke it back. "This wasn't a lucky guess. This was calculated. He was waiting for me to take that drive. He wanted me to feel this way. He wanted me to feel like a fool."
I lean against the counter and bury my face in my hands. The rage is still there but the exhaustion is starting to catch up. I feel small. I feel like I am drowning in a sea of secrets and games and I don't know who to trust.
"I am going to find him," I whisper into my palms. "I don't care if I have to burn this whole city to the ground. I am going to find him and I am going to make him pay for this."
I look up and my eyes are red and wild. I don't see the flicker of guilt in Luca's eyes. I don't see the way his hand is gripping the counter behind his back. I only see my own failure.
"I need to think," I say. I push past him and head toward my room. "I need to go back over everything. I missed something. I had to have missed something."
"Amelia, you need to rest," Luca calls after me.
"I'll rest when he's dead!" I shout back.
I slam my bedroom door and lock it. I don't turn on the light. I just collapse onto the bed and stare at the door. I am angry and I am frustrated and I am more determined than I have ever been. Ren Moretti thinks he won this round. He thinks he can play with me like I am some kind of game or plaything
Oh, how completely wrong he is.
I am going to figure out how he knew. I am going to find the leak. And when I do, I am going to show him exactly what happens when you push a Russo too far. That son of s bitch has no idea what's coming for him.
I lie on the floor of my bedroom with my back against the side of the bed. The room is dark and the only light comes from the thin gap under the door. I have been sitting here for hours and my legs are starting to go numb. The anger that fueled my breakdown earlier has burned out.
I am mentally drained. I have replayed every second of the warehouse raid in my head a hundred times. I have looked for the leak in my own logic. I have searched for the moment I gave myself away. Every time I reach the same conclusion. Ren Moretti knew I was coming . He played me like a fool and I have no doubt he did it with a smile on his face. The humiliation is like a physical weight in my chest. I am a Captain in the military and I am currently hiding and most likely wasting away in a billionaire's house because I have nowhere else to go.
The silence in my room is broken by a soft knock on my door. I don't move. I don't even blink. I just stare at the shadow of the door handle on the wall like a statue.
"Amelia," Luca says. His voice muffled by the heavy wood. "Open the door."
"Go away, Luca," I say. My voice sounds thin and scratchy to my ears. "I don't want to see your face. I don't want to speak to you or anyone else. Just leave me alone."
"I'm not going anywhere," he says. He sounds calm but there is a sharp edge to his tone that I haven't heard before. "You haven't eaten anything since we got back. You can't continue like this. You need to eat something before you fall ill. Open the door."
"I said no," I snap. I pull my knees up to my chest and wrap my arms around them. "I don't need a lecture on how to handle failure. I know exactly how I messed up. I don't need you standing there reminding me of it."
"I am not here to lecture you, Amelia" Luca says. He pauses for a second. "But I am not leaving this hallway until I know you are okay. If you don't open this door in the next ten seconds, I am breaking it down. Open the door, Amelia."
I let out a short and dry laugh. "You wouldn't dare. This is an expensive door, Luca. It's probably worth more than my annual salary."
"Nine," he says.
"You're being ridiculous," I tell him.
"Eight. Seven. Six."
I know he is being serious. He is a man who is used to getting what he wants and he is not the type to make empty threats from what I have observed so far, staying with him. I sigh and grab the edge of the mattress to pull myself up. My joints are stiff and my side gives a small protest as I stand. I walk over to the door and turn the lock.
I pull the door open and find him standing there. He has changed out of his suit and is wearing a dark sweater and trousers. He is holding a tray with a bowl of soup and a glass of water. He looks at my messy hair and my red eyes but he doesn't say anything. He just steps into the room and sets the tray on the nightstand.
"Sit down," he says.
"I'm not hungry," I say. I stay standing by the door. "I just want to sleep until this day is over."
"You are going to eat," Luca says. He sits on the edge of the bed and points to the spot next to him. "And then you are going to tell me why you think this is the end of the world. You are a soldier, Amelia. You know that no plan survives contact with the enemy. You got hit. Now you get back up."
I walk over and sit down because I don't have the energy to fight him anymore. I pick up the spoon and take a sip of the soup. It is warm and salty and it actually makes me feel a little better. I lean my head back against the headboard and close my eyes.
"How did he know, Luca?" I ask. Not yelling anymore. I am just tired. "I was so careful. I did everything right. But he was five steps ahead of me. It's like he was in the car with us. It's like he could hear my thoughts."
Luca stays quiet for a long time. I feel him move on the bed. He shifts closer until our shoulders are touching. I don't pull away. I am too drained to care about the distance or the engagement or the mistake in the hallway. I just need a human being to tell me that I am not crazy.
"Moretti is not as invincible as you might think," Luca says. His voice is a low rasp in the dark room. "He is a man with resources and a network that has been growing for decades. You are one person trying to tear down a mountain with a hammer. You are going to miss sometimes. That doesn't mean you stop swinging."
"I feel like a fool," I whisper. "I feel like I got played and mocked. I feel stupid."
"You aren't stupid Amelia. Don't even for one second think that you are. He targets you because you are dangerous to him. He sees you as a threat," Luca says. He reaches out and rests his hand over mine on the bed. His palm is warm and comforting, weirdly enough. "If you weren't a threat, he wouldn't have gone to the trouble of staging that warehouse. He wanted to break your spirit so you would stop looking. Are you going to let him do that?"
I look at him in the dim light. I see the intensity in his gaze and I see the way he is watching me.
"No," I say. I squeeze his hand back without thinking about it. "I am not going to let him win."
"Good," Luca says.
He stands up and walks toward the door. He stops at the threshold and looks back at me. "Get some real sleep, Amelia. Tomorrow we start again. We are going to find a new trail and this time we are going to be the ones waiting for him. We'll be ten steps ahead. I promise you."
He closes the door and I hear his footsteps fade down the hallway. I finish the soup and lie back on the pillows. I feel a small spark of hope return to my chest. He is right. I am a soldier and I don't know how to quit. Ren Moretti thinks he won this round but he just made a mistake. He showed me that he is afraid of me. Just like Luca said, he sees me as a threat and that is oddly comforting, knowing that I have such an effect on The Ren Moretti
I close my eyes and finally fall into a deep and dreamless sleep. I don't know that the man who just comforted me is the man I am hunting. I don't know that the hand I held is the hand that signed the orders for the warehouse. I only know that tomorrow I am going back to work.