Chapter 8 - THE MAN INSIDE THE FEDERAL TEAM
Agent Lena Torres did not defend her people.
She isolated them.
Every person who had accessed the protective address lost operational clearance immediately.
Phone records preserved.
Vehicles checked.
Bank accounts flagged through legal process.
The leak surfaced in six hours.
Special Agent Peter Walsh.
Twelve years federal service.
Married.
Two children.
No disciplinary history.
And $180,000 deposited into an offshore account over eighteen months.
Paid through Lake Meridian Analytics.
Matteo had bought a federal agent before anyone began investigating him.
That explained why Mateo Cruz’s attempts to contact authorities went nowhere.
Walsh had been intercepting reports tied to Romano security for years.
He had probably helped scare David Harlan.
Maybe more.
Walsh was arrested quietly.
He cooperated after prosecutors showed him the payment trail.
His first useful statement:
“Matteo isn’t running.”
I stared through the interview-room glass.
“What?”
Lena joined us.
“He says Matteo is preparing to come back.”
“Why?”
“Founders Night.”
I almost laughed.
“He still plans it?”
“Different plan.”
Walsh explained.
Matteo believed public family memorial offered leverage.
Board members.
Political allies.
Family elders.
Media outside.
If he could force control documents under threat, he might negotiate escape.
Delusional?
Maybe.
But desperate people do spectacularly dangerous things when the alternative is prison.
“What does he want?”
Walsh said:
“The original continuity addendum.”
Isabella had handed us copies.
The sealed original remained in a trust vault.
“If he destroys it?”
“Statutory copies still exist.”
“He knows that.”
“Yes.”
“So?”
Walsh looked uncomfortable.
“He wants the founder ledger.”
I frowned.
“What ledger?”
Lena looked at me.
“You don't know?”
Apparently not.
Walsh explained.
Sebastian Romano maintained a private ledger separating legitimate assets from criminal proceeds accumulated by the previous generation.
After my father’s death, I moved aggressively to clean corporate structures.
But some old assets remained in disputed holding companies.
The ledger identified beneficial ownership.
Worth perhaps $600 million.
Matteo believed whoever held the ledger could control or liquidate them.
I had never seen it.
“Where is it?”
Walsh said:
“Nero.”
I almost laughed.
“Again?”
“Not inside him.”
“What?”
“His original kennel tag.”
The brass tag Nero wore as a puppy.
My father supposedly stored a microfilm key inside it.
Matteo had learned through old security archives.
I stared.
“He drugged Nero partly to search him.”
“Yes.”
“Did he find it?”
“No.”
“Where is the tag?”
I thought.
Nero’s first collar had been retired years earlier.
Where?
Then I remembered.
My father’s study.
Shadow box.
Photograph of Nero as a puppy.
Old brass name tag mounted beneath it.
The estate.
Matteo might know.
I called current external security.
“Check Sebastian’s study. Do not touch the shadow box until photographed.”
Five minutes.
Then:
“It’s gone.”
Of course.
Matteo had already taken it.
“When?”
Security footage showed Grant Hale entering the study three weeks earlier.
He removed the brass tag.
So Matteo likely had the microfilm key.
“What does the key open?”
Walsh did not know.
But he knew where.
St. Michael’s.
The church.
My father had maintained a private safe-deposit cavity beneath the family memorial crypt.
Founders Night.
That was why Matteo still wanted the church.
Not nostalgia.
Access.
He planned to retrieve the ledger.
I looked at Lena.
“We let him.”
She stared.
“Absolutely not.”
“If the ledger exists, we need it too.”
“We can retrieve it first.”
“Then he knows.”
“Good.”
“He runs.”
“He’s already running.”
I thought of Sienna.
Elsie.
Nero.
Lucas.
Mateo.
My father.
“No.”
Lena waited.
“We end this.”
Agents could stage the memorial.
Secure civilians.
Control access.
Set a trap.
Dangerous.
But less dangerous than allowing Matteo to choose another battlefield.
Founders Night was canceled publicly.
Then quietly rescheduled as a private family memorial.
Information leaked intentionally through Walsh’s compromised channel before his arrest became known.
Matteo took the bait.
A message arrived to my burner.
JUST FAMILY. NO POLICE. BRING ISABELLA.
I laughed.
He still believed he was negotiating.
Lena built the operation.
No actual guests.
Only trained personnel in civilian clothing.
Isabella would not attend physically.
A stand-in from a distance.
I would.
That caused argument.
Lena:
“No.”
Me:
“Yes.”
“You are a target.”
“That is the point.”
“We do not use civilians as bait.”
“I’m not a civilian in Matteo’s head.”
“You are legally a civilian in my operation.”
Rebecca enjoyed watching someone else argue with me.
Eventually compromise.
I would be inside a secure section with body armor beneath my coat and extraction route.
Not alone.
No weapon in my hands.
I agreed.
Sienna called that evening.
“You’re going.”
Not question.
“How do you know?”
“Rebecca gets a certain face when she’s hiding something.”
I looked toward Rebecca.
She shrugged.
“Sienna.”
“Don’t tell me not to worry.”
“I wasn’t going to.”
“Yes, you were.”
Fair.
She continued:
“Elsie wants to talk.”
The child appeared.
“Mr. Alessio.”
“Yes?”
“Bad Mr. Matt?”
“We’re trying to bring him home.”
She frowned.
“Home?”
“Not our home.”
Important correction.
“Police home?”
I almost smiled.
“Something like that.”
Elsie looked serious.
“Nero says don’t go.”
Nero barked behind her.
“See?”
I laughed despite tension.
“He said that?”
“Yes.”
“I thought you were the dog expert now.”
“I am.”
Sienna smiled faintly.
Then Elsie held something up.
Nero’s current tag.
“Friend tag.”
“Yes.”
“Daddy put mark.”
I froze.
“What mark?”
She turned it.
Inside the back surface was a tiny scratched symbol.
C-7.
Sienna stared.
“I’ve never noticed that.”
Mateo had marked the collar too.
C-7.
I asked Rebecca to photograph.
She searched the master server.
Folder C7.
Encrypted.
Password unknown.
Could the brass puppy tag key decrypt it?
Matteo had the key.
Unless C-7 meant something else.
Elsie said:
“Daddy say C seven safe.”
Sienna looked at her.
“When did Daddy say that?”
Elsie shrugged.
She had been one when Mateo died.
Probably not actual memory?
Maybe repeated phrase from Sienna?
We did not rely on it.
Then Sienna suddenly stood.
“Wait.”
“What?”
“C7.”
Her face changed.
“Mateo’s storage unit.”
“What storage unit?”
“After he died, I emptied most of it.”
“Most?”
“There was a cabinet bolted to the floor.”
“Number?”
She closed her eyes.
“C-7.”
We found it through rental records.
Storage facility near Cicero.
Unit C7 had never been closed because automatic payments continued from Mateo’s old account funded by survivor benefits.
Inside:
Tools.
Old uniforms.
Security diagrams.
And a locked steel cabinet.
The key taped under Nero’s current tag lining.
Mateo had built layers.
The cabinet contained one file.
Not the founder ledger.
Something better.
Photographs of Grant removing the brass puppy tag from Sebastian’s study?
No.
Two years old.
Could not.
Instead, Mateo had predicted someone might search for the ledger and copied Sebastian’s map to the church cavity.
He had found references before dying.
At the bottom:
THE LEDGER IS NOT MONEY. IT IS NAMES.
My stomach tightened.
Names of what?
Mateo wrote:
Sebastian told me once the founder ledger identifies every official, officer, judge, union leader, and contractor the previous generation paid illegally.
That was why Matteo wanted it.
Blackmail.
Not $600 million.
A list capable of controlling hundreds of people.
My father may have kept it as protection while planning to dismantle old structures.
Matteo wanted to inherit the leverage.
The ledger could destroy careers.
Or expose corruption.
Founders Night became bigger.
If Matteo reached it first, he could rebuild his network from prison avoidance alone.
Lena said:
“We retrieve it now.”
This time I agreed.
Agents entered St. Michael’s crypt.
Used Mateo’s map.
Found the cavity.
Empty.
My blood went cold.
Someone had already taken the ledger.
Then a voice behind us:
“I wondered how long you’d need.”
Matteo.
He stood at the crypt entrance.
Gun in one hand.
A thin black book in the other.
Founder ledger.
He had arrived before the perimeter closed using an old clergy tunnel nobody knew remained open.
And behind him, held by the arm, was Marco Bellini.
Blood on his forehead.
Matteo smiled.
“Family memorial, brother.”
May you like
Then he pressed the gun against Marco’s neck.
“Let’s finally divide what Dad should have divided years ago.”
