Chapter 3 - Shadows Over Brooklyn
Ten minutes later, the grand study was filled with seven men in dark suits. Rain lashed against the tall glass windows of the estate, casting long, trembling shadows across the Persian rug.
Vance stood rigid near the fireplace, his knuckles white. “The security feeds were looped between 7:15 and 7:45 PM. Whoever did this had high-level clearance codes. They bypassed the silent alarms on the perimeter fence.”
Aleandro sat behind his mahogany desk, holding the small matte-black bug in his hand. He looked up at his men. “This wasn't a hit. It was an extraction. They wanted Isabella alive, and they wanted me focused on a ghost story about her betraying me.”
He set the bug down on the desk and tapped the side casing with the edge of a silver pocket knife. The tiny green light flickered, then turned amber.
“Isabella didn't just place this here to warn me,” Aleandro murmured, examining the micro-circuitry beneath the shell. “She altered the wiring. Look at the copper bridge on the frequency board.”
Dominic, Aleandro’s underboss and oldest friend, leaned in. His eyes widened. “That’s a proximity pulse. It’s not transmitting audio anymore. It’s pinging a low-frequency radio relay.”
“She knew I’d find it,” Aleandro said, his voice dropping into a razor-thin register. “She re-routed the circuit using her hairpin to trace the receiver’s signal. She didn't sell me out. She handed me the string to pull them out of the dark.”
Dominic grabbed a tactical tablet, linking it to the frequency spat out by the altered device. A red dot flashed on the digital map of New York Harbor, pulsing steadily against the black backdrop of the Red Hook shipping yards.
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“Pier 42,” Dominic said. “The abandoned cold-storage terminal.”
Aleandro stood up and unbuttoned his jacket, reaching into the hidden leather holster beneath his left arm to check the action on his custom Kimber .45. “Mobilize the strike team. No sirens. No police. Tonight, Brooklyn remembers why my father built this empire.”
