Chapter 4 - The Assassin Who Refused to Die
Victor did not die.
He tried very hard to.
Elena knelt in the rain with both hands pressed over the wound while Adrien’s men secured the terminal.
“Stay with me.”
Victor coughed.
“You always say that.”
“Because you keep getting shot.”
“Occupational habit.”
Blood touched his teeth.
Elena’s face tightened.
“Don’t talk.”
“You’ll miss me.”
“I already find you exhausting.”
Adrien arrived beside them.
“Ambulance is ninety seconds out.”
“No public hospital,” Victor whispered.
Elena snapped, “You don’t get a vote.”
Victor looked at Adrien.
“Bossy.”
Adrien almost smiled.
“Apparently.”
Carlo was alive.
Bruised.
Furious.
And loudly insisting he had been set up.
Adrien wanted answers immediately.
Elena wanted Victor breathing.
For once, Adrien let her priority win.
At St. Catherine’s private trauma center, Victor went into surgery.
Elena stood in the hallway still wearing his blood.
Adrien approached with coffee.
She shook her head.
“I don’t drink anything I didn’t open.”
He handed her the sealed bottle of water instead.
“Learning.”
“Slowly.”
Carlo was in another room under guard.
Adrien leaned against the wall.
“My uncle says Celeste grabbed him outside the club.”
“You believe him?”
“I believe he believes parts of what he says.”
“Political answer.”
“Mafia family.”
She looked at him.
“That is the first time you’ve admitted the word.”
“What word?”
“Mafia.”
“My accountant prefers diversified enterprise.”
Despite herself, Elena laughed.
Then the guilt returned.
She looked toward surgery.
“Victor shouldn’t have been there.”
“He chose to be.”
“I trained him.”
“And?”
“I taught him loyalty.”
Adrien shook his head.
“No. You earned it.”
That silenced her.
Matteo arrived with bad news.
The planning room recording system had been compromised.
Not hacked remotely.
Physically.
Someone placed a pin microphone beneath the table before they entered.
Adrien’s face hardened.
“Who had access?”
“Hotel staff. Security. Executives.”
“Too many.”
Elena said, “The microphone model?”
Matteo handed it to her in a plastic bag.
She recognized the soldering.
Hand-done.
Distinctive.
“No.”
Adrien saw her face.
“What?”
“This was built by Meridian’s technical chief.”
“Name?”
“Gideon Shaw.”
Victor’s younger brother.
The irony was brutal.
“Alive?” Matteo asked.
“As far as I knew, imprisoned in Prague.”
Matteo checked a secure database.
“Released eight months ago.”
Elena closed her eyes.
Another piece moving.
Victor woke the next afternoon.
His first words were, “Who missed?”
Elena almost cried from relief.
“You did.”
“Unacceptable.”
Adrien stood near the door.
Victor looked at him.
“Your uncle is dirty.”
Carlo, under guard two rooms away, would not appreciate that.
“What did you see?” Adrien asked.
“Before the lights died. Carlo slipped his restraints.”
Elena frowned.
“He was still tied when the lights came back.”
“Exactly.”
Adrien’s face changed.
Victor continued.
“He wanted us to think he was helpless.”
“What else?”
“Celeste handed him something.”
“What?”
“Couldn’t see.”
Adrien left immediately.
Carlo’s room was empty.
One guard unconscious.
Another missing.
The bathroom window open.
On the pillow, Carlo had left his hospital wristband wrapped around a key.
Adrien recognized it.
“My father’s vault.”
Elena looked at him.
“Where?”
“Moretti Tower.”
Thirty minutes later, they stood in the private basement beneath Adrien’s corporate headquarters.
The vault door had already been opened.
Nothing appeared stolen.
Then Adrien noticed one empty slot.
A red file box.
“My father’s personal ledgers.”
“What kind?”
“Cash accounts. Offshore trusts. Political payments.”
Elena looked at him.
“Enough to blackmail half the city?”
“Yes.”
“Then Carlo didn’t escape.”
“What?”
“He completed the job.”
Adrien’s jaw tightened.
His uncle had allowed himself to be kidnapped so Meridian could reach the vault indirectly.
Matteo asked, “Why not steal it years ago?”
Adrien answered.
“Because only I knew the key location.”
Elena looked at the hospital wristband.
“And Celeste got you to bring Carlo close enough to watch.”
Adrien stared at the empty shelf.
He had been played.
His phone vibrated.
A message from Carlo.
SORRY, KID.
THERE ARE SOME WARS YOU INHERIT BEFORE YOU’RE BORN.
Attached was a photograph.
Carlo standing beside Celeste.
And behind them, Derek Mott.
Three traitors.
One red box.
Elena zoomed in.
Something else was visible behind Celeste.
A wall map.
Twelve pins.
Eleven black.
One red.
Adrien’s name.
But next to it was another pin.
Green.
Elena Vale.
Adrien looked at her.
“Why are you green?”
Elena went still.
Because Meridian colors had meanings.
Black: completed.
Red: active target.
Green: protected asset.
She had not been marked for death.
She had been marked for retrieval.
Celeste had never been trying to kill her.
Adrien left the vault and walked alone into the underground garage. Elena followed five minutes later, giving him enough time to decide whether he wanted company.
He was standing beside a black sedan, staring at nothing.
“My father built that vault,” he said. “When I was twelve, he told me it was where men kept the truth they were too weak to say out loud.”
Elena leaned against the opposite car. “Charming parenting.”
“He made me memorize the emergency codes before he taught me to drive.”
“And Carlo watched?”
“Carlo made jokes. He was the easy uncle. The one who slipped me twenty dollars and told me not to become my father.”
Elena looked back toward the elevator. “Sometimes the person warning you about the monster just wants you looking in the wrong direction.”
Adrien glanced at her. “Celeste?”
“Maybe. Carlo. Maybe. Me too, if you’re smart.”
“You keep giving me reasons not to trust you.”
“No. I keep refusing to demand that you do.”
That answer stayed with him.
When they returned upstairs, Matteo had spread Carlo’s old phone records across the conference table. One number appeared dozens of times over the previous year, always for less than thirty seconds.
The registered owner was a cemetery maintenance company in Virginia.
The cemetery bordered the ruins of Meridian’s supposedly destroyed operations center.
Elena stared at the call pattern. “Carlo wasn’t introduced to Celeste recently.”
Adrien’s mouth hardened. “He’s been talking to her for a year.”
Victor’s photograph remained on the wall beside the green pin.
Elena touched it once, then lowered her hand.
Whatever Celeste wanted, she had been building the path back to Elena long before JFK.
She had not been marked for death.
She had been marked for retrieval.
May you like
Celeste had never been trying to kill her.
She wanted Elena back.
