Chapter 125 -
Matteo was at the door within two minutes of Leo calling him.
He came in alert, eyes scanning the room the way they always did when something was wrong. Leo told him to shut the door. Matteo shut it.
"Every person in this house. Staff, guards, anyone with access to this floor. One at a time, starting now."
Matteo didn't blink. "You think the source is inside."
"Jordan confirmed it," Leo said. "Someone feeding Santiago our movements in real time."
"How long do I have?"
"Tonight," Leo said. "We go in tomorrow morning."
Matteo left without another word.
The room was quiet for a moment after the door closed. One of the techs cleared his throat.
"Should we be concerned?" he asked.
Christian turned to look at him slowly. The question hung in the air for an uncomfortable beat.
"Everyone who was in this room stays until further notice," Leo said. "If you need the bathroom, Micheal goes with you."
"Are you serious?" the second tech said.
"Very serious," Leo said.
Nobody argued after that.
Nia sat down. She watched Leo the way she had learned to, reading the small things, the tightness around his eyes, the controlled stillness. He was angry. He was keeping it contained because there was no space for it right now.
"We keep moving," he said to the room. "We still have a job to do. The mole doesn't change the plan, it just means we seal the information and proceed."
Christian pulled the map back toward him. "I want to look at the south access tunnel Jordan described. If there's a sublevel we don't have on our drone feed, we're going in partially blind."
"Jordan said fourteen men," Micheal said. "That's our adjusted number."
"Jordan also told a criminal organization where to find us for months," Christian said flatly. "We verify everything he gave us before we build a plan around it."
"Agreed," Leo said.
The door opened.
Nobody had knocked. The room reacted, hands moving toward weapons, three chairs scraping back at once.
But it was Lucia.
She stood in the doorway, one hand on the frame, and she had Gabriel on her hip. The boy had his head against her shoulder and his eyes wide, watching all the hands that had just moved toward guns. Lucia's amber gaze swept the room once.
"Relax," she said. "It's just me."
Christian moved to the door immediately. "This is a closed session."
"I know what it is," Lucia said. She put Gabriel down carefully and kept hold of his hand. "He won't sleep. He heard the guards in the hallway and he's been asking for Leo." She looked past Christian directly. "Uncle Nardo's rule, not mine."
Gabriel's head turned at the name. He found Leo across the room and his whole face changed.
"Uncle Nardo," he said, and the word came out relieved and small, the way only a child's voice could make something simple sound like the whole world.
Leo moved from the table. He crossed the room and crouched in front of Gabriel, his hands coming to the boy's shoulders.
"Hey," Leo said. His voice had changed completely, now softer. "What are you doing up, my boy?"
"There are lots of men walking around," Gabriel said seriously. "And Mama kept looking at the door."
"The men are just working," Leo said. "Everything is fine."
Gabriel considered this with the gravity of a five-year-old making a very important decision. "Is Nia okay?"
Leo glanced at Nia. She gave Gabriel a small wave from across the table.
"I'm fine, Gaby," she said.
He studied her. "You look tired."
"I am a little bit," she admitted.
"Mama says you should drink warm milk when you're tired," Gabriel said.
Micheal made a sound behind his hand. Nia felt her chest do something complicated.
Leo stood, lifting Gabriel with him, and the boy settled against his shoulder like he belonged there. He looked at Lucia over the boy's head.
"He can stay for ten minutes," Leo said. "Then Rosa takes him."
Lucia nodded once, but she didn't move toward the door. Her eyes were moving over the table, over the maps and the drone feeds and the faces of the people in the room.
"What happened?" she asked Leo quietly.
"We found the warehouse," Leo said.
Lucia's jaw tightened. "And Santiago?"
"He's there."
She was quiet. Gabriel had found a loose thread on Leo's collar and was focused on it.
"Tell me something," Lucia said. Her voice had dropped, private enough that only the people nearest to her could hear it. "When you go in. Is the plan to take him alive?"
Christian turned from the window. "Lucia."
"I want to know," she said, her amber eyes not moving from Leo. "He's my family too. My cousin. Whatever he's done, I want to know what you're planning."
Leo held her gaze. "The Don's orders."
"The Don wants him alive," Lucia said. It wasn't a question.
"To answer for Andrea," Leo said. "In front of everyone. That was always the plan."
Lucia looked down for a moment. When she looked up, something had shifted in her face.
"Santiago has a secondary location," she said. "East edge of the industrial district, particularly a old cold storage building with a blue door. He used to hide there as a child, to avoid the Don." She paused. "He called it his back door."
The room had gone quiet.
"You knew this and didn't say anything before now?" Christian said.
"I didn't know it was relevant before now," Lucia said, meeting his eyes steadily. "I thought it was childhood. I thought everything was different then."
Christian stared at her. She stared back.
Leo shifted Gabriel's weight. "Micheal."
"Already mapping it," Micheal said, fingers moving on the laptop.
Gabriel looked up at Leo with his wide hazel eyes. "Uncle Nardo, are we going somewhere?"
"Not tonight," Leo said.
"But tomorrow?"
"Maybe tomorrow."
Gabriel absorbed this. He reached up and patted Leo's jaw gently.
"Come back," Gabriel said simply. "Okay? Promise me."
The room went very still.
Leo looked at the boy.
"Okay," he said quietly. "I promise."
Rosa appeared in the doorway behind Lucia, breathless from the stairs. "Sorry, sorry. He slipped past me when I was putting away the—" She stopped at the quiet in the room. "I will take him now."
Rosa gathered Gabriel from Leo's arms. The boy went without protest, looking back over her shoulder. He found Nia last.
"Drink the warm milk," he said.
Then Rosa took him away.
The door clicked shut, and the weight of everything came back to the room all at once.
Lucia turned to Leo. "There's something else," she said. Her voice was low. "About the mole." She glanced around the table, taking in every face. "I think I know who it is."