Chapter 6 - THE LEAK INSIDE THE INVESTIGATION
I stopped trusting everyone at 7:42 that evening.
Not forever.
Just operationally.
Rebecca moved Sienna and Elsie before I even finished telling her the photograph existed.
Nero went with them.
No digital destination was shared.
Phones removed.
Vehicles switched twice.
Only four people knew the second location.
Rebecca.
The federal case agent, Lena Torres.
Me.
And Marco.
Matteo could not be allowed another photograph.
I looked at Marco.
He understood.
“You think I’m still possible.”
“Yes.”
His jaw tightened.
“Fair.”
He volunteered to remain at the estate under observation.
No complaints.
That moved him slightly toward trust.
Not all the way.
Agent Lena Torres did something smarter.
She gave four different false relocation details to four different people.
Old counterintelligence tactic.
Each recipient received a different destination.
Hotel in Oak Brook.
Farm near Rockford.
Condo in Evanston.
Safe house in Wisconsin.
Then we waited.
Four hours later, someone connected to Matteo searched vehicle records near Rockford.
The false location given to Isabella.
My family attorney.
My stomach tightened.
She had already admitted helping Matteo.
But claimed she was cooperating now.
Lena called her in.
Isabella broke within twenty minutes.
“I didn’t tell Matteo.”
“Who?” I asked.
“My son.”
Lucas.
Her sixteen-year-old.
“He heard me speaking to my attorney.”
“And?”
“He messaged someone.”
“Who?”
“Matteo.”
I stared.
“Your son communicates with Matteo directly?”
Isabella cried.
“For months.”
Matteo had not merely used Lucas’s fentanyl arrest to blackmail his mother.
He had befriended the boy.
Paid legal fees.
Bought him a car.
Presented himself as the adult who “understood mistakes.”
Then used him as an information source.
A teenager.
Another pressure point.
Lena asked:
“Where is Lucas now?”
Isabella went pale.
“School.”
No.
It was eight at night.
“Basketball practice?”
“No practice.”
She called.
No answer.
Again.
Nothing.
Location sharing disabled.
Matteo had likely taken him too.
Not kidnapping in the classic sense.
Lucas trusted him.
That made it worse.
Matteo was collecting people he could use.
Agents traced Lucas’s new car.
Found near a private hangar at DuPage Airport.
Matteo’s family jet was still grounded.
But another plane had filed a flight plan.
Owned by Lake Meridian Analytics.
Destination:
Toronto.
Agents moved.
Too late.
Plane departed twelve minutes before they arrived.
Passenger manifest:
MATTHEW ROSS.
LUKE VANCE.
False names.
Matteo and Lucas.
International alert issued.
Isabella collapsed.
For all her mistakes, she was still a mother watching the person who blackmailed her take her child across a border.
“Bring him back,” she whispered.
I looked at her.
“We’ll try.”
“No.”
Her eyes filled.
“Promise.”
I understood the impulse.
Promises are dangerous when outcomes do not belong to you.
“I promise we won’t stop looking.”
That was honest.
The Toronto flight never landed.
It diverted over Michigan.
Transponder lost for seven minutes.
Then reappeared.
Landed at a small airport near Traverse City.
Aircraft found empty.
Vehicle waiting.
Matteo had planned escape well.
Lucas’s phone was discovered inside the plane.
One message unsent:
MOM I THINK SOMETHING IS WRONG.
My anger shifted.
Lucas had realized too late.
Now he was no longer accomplice.
He was hostage.
We found the first useful clue on Matteo’s office computer.
A map of Michigan.
A property circled near Petoskey.
Romano family hunting lodge.
Unused for twelve years.
Owned through an old trust Matteo might know.
Agents prepared.
Then Rebecca called me privately.
“Do not go.”
“I wasn’t planning to.”
She knew I was lying.
“Alessio.”
“My brother has a teenager.”
“And federal agents exist.”
“He also threatened Elsie.”
“Which makes you emotional.”
“Correct.”
“So stay out.”
I hated her.
That was why I paid her.
She was right.
I stayed in Chicago.
Hardest thing I did.
Agents reached the hunting lodge before dawn.
No Matteo.
No Lucas.
But evidence of recent occupancy.
Food.
Medical supplies.
Laptop charger.
And one item in the fireplace that had not fully burned.
A photograph of my father.
On the back:
HE CHOSE ALESSIO. I CHOOSE MYSELF.
Matteo’s resentment ran older than business.
Later that morning, Marco entered my office.
“I need to tell you something.”
“What?”
“Your father knew Matteo resented you.”
I stared.
“How?”
“When Matteo was twenty-one, he tried to sell a minority trust interest.”
“He couldn’t.”
“Exactly.”
“To whom?”
“Private fund in Switzerland.”
“Why?”
“Cash.”
“How much?”
“Forty million.”
My jaw tightened.
“Dad stopped it?”
“Yes.”
“Punishment?”
“No.”
Of course.
I had protected Matteo.
Apparently my father had too.
Marco continued:
“Sebastian wanted him removed from succession.”
“What?”
“He prepared an amendment.”
My stomach tightened.
“Why wasn’t it filed?”
“You stopped him.”
I stared.
“No.”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“You were twenty-seven.”
Memory surfaced.
A family argument.
My father furious about “Matteo’s recklessness.”
I told him if he cut my brother out, he cut me out too.
I had believed I was protecting Matteo from a cruel father.
Instead, I may have preserved his motive and access.
Marco continued:
“Sebastian backed down because of you.”
I looked away.
That guilt belonged to me.
Not Matteo’s crimes.
But my choices mattered.
“What else did Dad know?”
“That Matteo believed the company should have been divided equally.”
“He has twenty-eight percent beneficial interest.”
“He wanted half.”
“Why?”
“Because he said you inherited leadership only because you were born first.”
I laughed bitterly.
“Our father was killed when I was twenty-nine. I inherited chaos.”
“Matteo remembers the money.”
Of course.
People see privilege from where they stand.
Then Marco said:
“There is another person who may know where he went.”
“Who?”
“Your aunt.”
I frowned.
My father’s younger sister, Elena Romano, had lived in Arizona for a decade.
She despised Chicago and all family business.
“Why Elena?”
“Matteo visited her three months ago.”
“How do you know?”
“Private security expense.”
“Why wasn’t I told?”
“Routine.”
Nothing was routine anymore.
I called Elena.
She answered:
“What did your brother do?”
No greeting.
I almost smiled.
“How did you know?”
“Because Matteo only calls me when he wants money or sympathy.”
“What did he want?”
“Old property records.”
“Which property?”
She hesitated.
“Wisconsin.”
My chest tightened.
“Where?”
“Our grandfather’s cabin near Door County.”
I knew it.
Abandoned.
Not used since childhood.
“Why?”
“He said he wanted somewhere private to think.”
“When?”
“Three months ago.”
“Did you give him access?”
“Yes.”
“Key?”
“Old lock code.”
“Anyone with him?”
“No.”
“Did he ask about trust documents?”
Elena went quiet.
“Why?”
“Answer.”
“Yes.”
“What?”
“He wanted to know whether your grandfather ever intended the estate to be divided equally.”
“And?”
“I told him no.”
My jaw tightened.
“What did he say?”
“That everyone always chose you.”
There.
Again.
Elena continued:
“Alessio, Matteo has been angry since your mother died.”
Our mother had died when I was sixteen.
Matteo was thirteen.
“Why?”
“Because she asked you to protect him.”
“So?”
“He heard it.”
I stopped.
Elena said:
“He told me once nobody ever asked him to protect you.”
My chest tightened.
A child’s interpretation.
You are the weaker one.
Alessio is the strong one.
He needs nothing.
Matteo had spent his life receiving protection and resenting what it implied.
That did not excuse murder.
But motive is rarely born fully formed.
By noon agents reached the Door County cabin.
This time they found Lucas.
Alive.
Locked in an upstairs room.
Dehydrated.
Terrified.
Matteo gone.
Lucas said Matteo received a call at 6:00 a.m., panicked, and left.
“Who called?”
“Don’t know.”
“What did he say?”
Lucas remembered:
“You said the dog was secure.”
My blood went cold.
Matteo believed Nero was no longer secure.
Whoever called knew where Sienna and Elsie had been moved.
Still a leak.
Lucas continued:
“Then he said, ‘If Alessio gets the collar file, it’s over.’”
I frowned.
“Collar file?”
Nero’s collar.
We had examined the transmitter beneath his fur.
Not the collar.
I called Rebecca.
“Where is Nero’s original collar?”
Silence.
At the first safe house, staff had removed it because the leather was wet.
Packed with Sienna’s belongings.
Moved with them.
Rebecca checked.
Still there.
She opened it under camera.
Thick black leather.
Steel buckle.
Inside lining.
A tiny rigid section.
She cut one seam.
Something fell out.
MicroSD card.
No one had put it there during the recent surveillance operation.
The stitching was old.
At least two years.
Mateo Cruz.
Sienna’s dead husband had worked around Nero.
Maybe he had hidden evidence in the one place he knew Matteo’s people would not search casually.
On my dog.
The card contained one video.
Date:
The night Mateo died.
Mateo Cruz facing a camera.
“If Sienna finds this, I’m sorry.”
Her hand covered her mouth on video call.
Mateo continued:
“I copied the master server.”
Good.
Already known.
Then:
“But the most important file is not about surveillance.”
He lifted a document.
“Matteo Romano paid for Sebastian Romano’s route change the night he was killed.”
My world stopped.
My father.
Sebastian had supposedly died in an ambush by a rival crew five years earlier.
Matteo would have been twenty-six.
Mateo continued:
“I don’t know whether Matteo ordered the killing.”
A breath.
“But he sent Sebastian’s vehicle route to an outside number eleven minutes before the shooters arrived.”
I could not move.
My younger brother may have facilitated our father’s murder.
The child I protected after Sebastian’s death may have helped create the death that made me protector.
The card included the message.
M.R. terminal.
Route attachment.
Recipient tied to a rival faction.
Payment received by Lake Meridian two days later.
Three million dollars.
That was why Matteo feared the collar file.
Not because it proved he wanted my company.
Because it connected him to the event that gave me the company in the first place.
May you like
And now the question was no longer whether Matteo would try to kill me.
It was whether he had already killed our father.
