Chapter 6 - The Trap is Sprung
“Don't touch it,” Gabriel snapped, his arm shooting out to grab Leah’s shoulder and jerk her backward just as her hand hovered an inch from the laptop lid.
“Why?” Leah asked, her heart dropping into her stomach. “Is it rigged?”
“It’s not rigged,” a voice echoed from the dark corridor behind them. “It’s just lonely.”
Gabriel spun around, drawing his Beretta in a single, fluid motion, his body forming a protective shield in front of Leah.
Stepping out from the shadows near the service elevator were three men.
The man in the lead was wearing an immaculate charcoal cashmere overcoat that didn't have a single drop of rain on it. His silver hair was brushed back with surgical precision, and his thin, aristocratic lips curved into a warm, grandfatherly smile that didn't reach his cold, dead eyes.
Victor Sayegh.
Behind him stood two armed men wearing Bellandi security pins, their suppressors already screwed onto the barrels of their MP5 submachine guns.
“Gabriel, my boy,” Victor said, spreading his hands as if he had just run into his favorite nephew at a country club. “I must admit, when I heard Cecilia had gone for a midnight swim, I assumed she was finally losing her grip entirely. I never imagined she’d manage to hand off her little diary to a hospital nurse.”
Gabriel didn't lower his pistol. His knuckles turned white around the grip. “You’ve been skimming from my grandfather since before I was born, Victor. You used the Bellandis to finance your retirement, and you tried to murder an eighty-year-old woman to cover your tracks.”
Victor sighed, shaking his head with mild disappointment. “Murder? Such an ugly, theatrical word, Gabriel. Cecilia is old. Her heart is weak. A sudden shock—finding her old home broken into, perhaps—would have been a tragedy, not a crime.”
He took another step forward, ignoring the muzzle of Gabriel’s pistol pointing directly at his chest.
“And as for the skimming... let’s call it a management fee,” Victor continued smoothly. “Your grandfather was a visionary, but he was a butcher. He built this empire on blood and dock strikes. I built the modern infrastructure. Without me, Moretti Maritime would be a bankrupt trucking company in Indiana.”
“Step away from the vault,” Gabriel ordered, his voice dropping into a lethal, vibrating register.
“I’m afraid I can’t do that, Gabriel,” Victor smiled, gesturing toward the laptop sitting inside the vault. “You see that machine? That’s a live satellite relay connected directly to the federal grand jury downtown. At twelve o'clock today, an automated packet containing every illegal wire transfer, every offshore bribe, and every tax evasion scheme executed by the Moretti family over the last thirty years is scheduled to upload.”
Leah stared at him in horror. “You’re framing him.”
“Not framing him, my dear—replacing him,” Victor corrected, his eyes locking onto Leah with chilling amusement. “Once Gabriel is indicted for forty counts of racketeering and financial fraud, the board will vote for new leadership. And who better to steer the Moretti empire into the twenty-first century than its most trusted legal counsel?”
Sal stepped out from the corridor behind Victor, his hands raised slightly, a heavy knife gripped low in his right palm. But before Sal could move, one of the Bellandi enforcers cocked his weapon, leveling the barrel squarely at Sal’s chest.
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“Don't be a hero, Sal,” Victor warned softly. “The vault door has a pneumatic seal. If I press the button in my pocket, this room becomes a concrete tomb. You’ll all be historical footnotes by dinner time.”
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