Chapter 6 The Devil Sits At The Head Of The Table
"Who is it?"
Luca's mouth opened. Closed.
That one second told her everything.
"Luca." Her voice came out flat and dangerous. "Who is on that perimeter right now?"
Before he could answer the security room door swung open and Marco walked in.
Fifteen minutes early. Briefing cut short.
She read his face the second he stepped through — that controlled blank that meant something had already gone wrong and he was managing the fallout. Her shoulders pulled back.
His eyes swept the space. Her. Luca. The monitor showing the dark shape on the south perimeter feed. He clocked all of it in under two seconds.
"Talk," he said. To both of them.
He pulled up his security logs while he spoke.
The don hadn't called the briefing to test loyalty. Someone had sent an anonymous tip to his private encrypted line — no name, no specifics, just that an unauthorised investigation was running inside his own security team. The don laid it on the table and watched every face in the room without revealing how much he knew or where it came from.
Marco held.
But the don looked at him last.
And held on him the longest.
Now Marco's fingers moved across the keyboard pulling up the estate's internal network activity. Cross referencing. Timestamp against timestamp. Each click landing sharp in the silence.
The room went very quiet.
He turned the monitor so Luca could see the screen.
The anonymous tip had been sent from inside the estate. During the exact window Luca was standing in that corridor with his phone.
Luca looked at the screen.
The colour left his face so fast it was almost physical — like watching a man understand in real time exactly how badly he had miscalculated. His chest rose once, shallow, and didn't fully fall again.
"I thought it was untraceable," he said. Barely above a whisper.
"It wasn't," Marco said. Flat. Final.
Luca looked at Gia.
She looked back at him and the thing sitting in her chest right now had no clean name. This was her brother. The same man who had sat at breakfast with red eyes and a cracked voice and said I'm sorry about Ivy while knowing — while knowing — exactly what his decision had set in motion that night. Her back teeth pressed together so hard her jaw ached.
"I was trying to buy you time," Luca said. "I thought if my father was chasing a leak inside his own team he wouldn't be watching you. I thought—"
"You thought." The words came out quiet and sharp. "Ivy is in the ground, Luca."
"I know—"
"She is in the ground." Her voice dropped lower. Meaner. "And you sat across from me at that table and looked me in the eye."
She moved.
Not a decision. Her body crossing the room toward him fast and purposeful, hands not even fully formed into fists yet but heading there — her feet eating up the distance before she had consciously chosen to close it.
Marco moved directly between them — facing her, close enough that she had to stop or walk into him. One hand came up slightly — not grabbing her, not restraining her, present. A wall that was asking rather than forcing.
His eyes were on hers.
Steady. Dark. Asking her to think about where she was and what this house did to people who lost control inside it.
She stopped.
Her jaw ached. Her hands were shaking at her sides and she let them shake because she needed somewhere to put what was moving through her. Her breath came in and out through her nose in short controlled pulls.
Luca's voice came from behind Marco. Smaller now. "The person on the perimeter — I didn't send them. I swear to God I didn't send them."
Marco turned his head slightly without taking his eyes fully off Gia. "Then who did?"
Silence. Heavy.
"Luca." Marco's voice was low and precise. "Who has access to my security blueprint?"
Another silence. Longer. The kind that had weight in it.
"My mother," Luca said.
The south perimeter camera cut out.
Clean. Deliberate. There one second, black the next.
Then the east garden feed.
Then the gate.
Marco was at the main panel before the third camera died. His hands moved fast across the system — rerouting, pulling backup feeds, searching for the gap. Luca stood with his arms crossed over his chest, jaw locked, eyes tracking the darkening monitors one by one like a man watching something he set in motion and cannot stop.
Marco looked at Gia.
That one second — his eyes on hers, the door at his back, somewhere out there a person moving through the dark with his own blueprint in their hands — said everything neither of them was going to say out loud.
He looked at Luca. "Lock this door behind me. You open it for nobody."
Then he looked at Gia one more time.
He looked at her. Something in his eyes that wasn't quite fear but lived right next to it — there for one second and then gone because he didn't have time for it and neither did she.
Then he was gone. The door clicked shut. The lock turned.
Five minutes passed.
She stood at the monitors and watched every feed cycle.
Gate. Grounds. East corridor. South perimeter. Garden.
Nothing.
Ten minutes.
Every feed empty of the one person who should be on all of them. She picked up her phone and called him.
Once. Twice. Three times.
Rang out.
Beside her Luca had gone the colour of old ash. Arms crossed. Eyes on the monitors. His right hand gripped his own left arm until she could see the pressure in his fingers from where she stood.
She looked back at the feeds.
Gate. Grounds. East corridor. South perimeter. Garden.
The same feeds. The same empty frames. The same absence where he should be.
The last feed to cycle was the don's private study.
Don Lombardi was behind his desk.
Hands folded. Completely still. Not at his phone. Not at papers.
Looking directly into the camera.
Her phone lit up in her hand.
She looked down at the screen.
His name. Glowing there.
She looked back at the monitor.
He was still looking into the lens. Still completely still. Calling her while holding the camera's eye — like the call and the stare were the same calculated move made by a man who had never in his life done anything without knowing exactly what it would cost.
The phone vibrated once in her palm. Twice.
Luca saw the screen. Whatever colour had been left in his face went with it. His chin dropped slightly — the collapse of someone who has just understood that the thing they feared most has already happened.
She looked at her father's name glowing in her hand.
And didn't move.
The phone rang a third time.