Chapter 11 - THE VANGUARD'S CONFESSION
-11
The atmosphere in the subterranean armory froze into absolute, breathless stillness. The enforcers stared at me in stunned silence, their weapons half-lowered in sheer disbelief. Even Dante lowered his Beretta by an inch, staring at me with a mixture of shock and profound, terrifying pride. The Alighieri blood wasn't just in my veins—it was burning in my soul.
The prisoner looked into my eyes, searching for a bluff, finding only an endless, cold void. The defiance slowly drained from his face, replaced by the primitive, sweating terror of a man looking death squarely in the eye.
"Okay! Okay, stop!" the lieutenant choked out, raising his bound hands defensively. "Phase two isn't a hit squad. It's an asset acquisition protocol!"
"Explain," I commanded, keeping the pistol steady.
"The Vanguard council... they didn't just want you dead," the prisoner blurted out, talking in a frantic, unbroken rush. "They knew about the encrypted offline server keys your mother hid before she went into hiding. Those keys control the financial routing of every syndicate account, real estate portfolio, and offshore shell corporation in the city. Julian Sterling—our inside man—engineered the whole trap. He thought if we could capture you or the boy, we could force Dante to hand over the master keys to the entire empire without firing a shot!"
The name Julian Sterling hit me like a physical blow. The CEO of Kingsley Global... the man who had tried to orchestrate my entire life from behind a corporate mahogany desk.
"Julian," Dante snarled, his face twisting into a mask of pure, murderous rage. "That corporate leech has been hiding behind a legal charter in the financial district while funding the Vanguard's proxy wars for a decade."
"He's scheduled to board a private flight out of the municipal airfield at noon today," the prisoner babbled, weeping tears of pure panic now. "With all the hard drives containing the decrypted financial records! That's the truth! Please, don't shoot!"
I looked down at the man for a long, quiet moment. Then, with deliberate slowness, I uncocked the hammer of the pistol and lowered the weapon to my side.
"Thank you for your cooperation," I said flatly.
I turned away, looking directly at my father. Dante’s dark eyes locked onto mine, a silent conversation passing between us that required no words at all. The waitress who served sea bass was officially dead. In her place stood an Alighieri.
"Thomas," Dante ordered sharply, stepping away from the prisoner. "Secure these three in the holding cells. No harm comes to them—yet. We're going to need them to testify before the syndicate tribunal."
"And Julian Sterling?" Thomas asked, adjusting his grip on his assault rifle.
May you like
Dante pulled a pair of leather driving gloves from his pocket and snapped them onto his hands, the black dragons stretching tightly across his knuckles.
"Prepare the private chopper," Dante said, a grim, lethal smile touching his lips. "We have a flight to intercept."
