Chapter 6 - Someone Deleted the Cameras
Warehouse Seventeen sat on the southern edge of the city beside an abandoned rail spur.
I had owned it for fourteen years.
For the last five, the paperwork said it stored furniture imported through Savannah.
The paperwork was apparently lying.
Marco and I arrived after dark with four men I trusted enough to stand behind me while I opened a door I no longer trusted myself to walk through.
The main floor looked normal.
Crates.
Pallets.
Dust.
Forklifts.
A smell of old wood and machine oil.
Marco swept his flashlight across the concrete.
“No overnight crew?”
“Schedule says none.”
“Schedule also says furniture.”
I almost smiled.
“Point taken.”
We found the first inconsistency near the rear wall.
Fresh tire marks.
The second was a security keypad that didn't appear on any building plan.
I stared at it.
“Who installed this?”
Marco photographed it.
“Not us.”
We could have forced it.
Instead, Marco tried Adrian's old access number.
The lock clicked.
Nobody said anything.
Beyond the door, a staircase led underground.
Warehouse Seventeen did not have a basement.
At least not officially.
Downstairs we found a room full of servers.
Not old equipment.
Active equipment.
Cooling fans hummed.
Indicator lights blinked.
Someone had built a hidden surveillance center underneath one of my properties.
On the wall were twelve monitors.
Most were dark.
Three were not.
One displayed the entrance to my estate.
One showed the hallway outside Lila's bedroom.
The third showed the park bench where we had met Eli.
Marco swore.
I stepped toward the screens.
My daughter had been watched inside her own home.
Not from our system.
From another one.
“How?” I asked.
“We'll trace it.”
“No. Tell me now.”
Marco examined the feed.
“Could be piggybacking on existing cameras. Could be separate devices.”
“Find them all.”
He was already working.
One of the men called from another room.
“Boss.”
We entered.
Shelves lined the walls.
Boxes.
Folders.
Hard drives.
Photographs.
My family had been documented for years.
Bianca leaving a salon.
Lila entering school.
Me arriving at meetings.
Rosa shopping.
Marco driving.
Even Eli sleeping near an alley.
That photograph stopped me.
“They were tracking him too.”
Marco looked over my shoulder.
“Since when?”
The date printed in the corner was six weeks earlier.
Before Eli approached us.
“They knew he saw something,” I said.
“And let him stay alive.”
“For a reason.”
Everything suddenly felt staged.
Perhaps Eli had been allowed to reach me.
Perhaps someone wanted the accusation delivered.
Perhaps the entire operation was designed not merely to harm Lila but to break my trust in Bianca.
“Search everything.”
I opened folders.
Most contained financial records.
Companies I knew.
Companies I didn't.
Transfers.
Shipments.
Old Russo accounts.
Moretti accounts.
Then I found a medical folder.
Lila's name was printed on it.
I opened it.
Copies of her appointments.
Medication lists.
Meal schedules.
Even notes about when Bianca administered Salvatore's packages.
Someone had documented each exposure.
The entries never specified what the substance was.
Only dates.
Times.
Effects.
My hands began shaking.
Marco saw it.
“Vincent.”
“They were using her like an experiment.”
“Give me the folder.”
I didn't.
I turned pages.
One entry read:
Visual decline progressing as expected. B remains compliant. V unaware.
B.
Bianca.
V.
Vincent.
I wanted to tear the room apart.
Instead, I photographed every page.
A final note appeared near the back.
Phase II contingent upon asset transfer.
“What asset?” Marco asked.
“I don't know.”
Then one of our men found a safe.
Inside were three passports.
One belonged to Salvatore.
One belonged to a man I didn't know.
The third belonged to Adrian Russo.
The photograph was recent.
Three years after his supposed death.
Alive.
I took the passport.
Marco stared.
“Well.”
“Don't say it.”
“I was going to say Bianca was telling the truth.”
“About Adrian.”
“That's more than we had an hour ago.”
I slipped the passport into my jacket.
A sudden sound came from upstairs.
Footsteps.
Marco killed the lights.
Everyone moved.
No shouting.
No chaos.
Just trained silence.
The warehouse door opened above us.
Someone walked across the main floor.
One person.
Slowly.
Then a voice called down.
“Vincent.”
I knew that voice.
Salvatore.
Marco looked at me.
I moved toward the stairs.
He caught my arm.
“Could be a trap.”
“Everything is a trap.”
“Then don't walk into this one.”
I considered it.
Then shouted upward.
“Sal.”
A laugh.
“You always were stubborn.”
“Come downstairs.”
“No.”
“Afraid?”
“Of you? Sometimes.”
At least he was honest.
“Where is Adrian?”
Silence.
“Sal?”
“Alive.”
My chest tightened.
“Where?”
“If I tell you now, he'll be dead by morning.”
“Who controls him?”
“You're finally asking the right question.”
I climbed two steps.
Marco followed.
“Who, Sal?”
“The man who has spent three years convincing you he was your friend.”
“Name.”
“You already know.”
“I don't.”
“You do.”
A metallic noise sounded overhead.
Then footsteps ran.
Marco rushed past me.
By the time we reached the main floor, Salvatore was gone.
A side door swung open.
Outside, tires screamed.
My men ran after the vehicle.
I didn't.
On the floor where Sal had been standing sat a phone.
Cheap.
Disposable.
It rang.
I answered.
No greeting.
A distorted voice.
“You found the room.”
“Who is this?”
“You should ask your wife.”
“I already did.”
“Then ask her why Adrian disappeared.”
My jaw tightened.
“What do you want?”
“The thing your father took from the Russos.”
“My father is dead.”
“So are many people because of him.”
“I have no idea what you're talking about.”
“You will.”
The voice paused.
“And Vincent?”
“What?”
“Stop testing your daughter's food.”
I went cold.
The call ended.
Marco stared at me.
“They know.”
“Yes.”
“They're watching in real time.”
“Yes.”
I looked around the warehouse.
Every camera.
Every server.
Every glowing light suddenly felt like an eye.
“Shut everything down.”
“We'll lose the trace.”
“Copy what we need first. Then kill it.”
Marco issued orders.
I walked outside.
Atlanta's skyline glowed in the distance.
For the first time in my life, the city I controlled looked enormous.
Too enormous.
A man can own clubs and warehouses.
He can buy buildings.
He can fill rooms with loyal men.
But control is always partly an illusion.
Someone had built an entire operation beneath one of my properties without my knowledge.
Someone had entered my home through technology.
Someone had manipulated my wife.
Someone had experimented with my child.
And someone believed my dead father had stolen something from the Russo family.
My phone vibrated.
A message from an unknown number.
One photograph.
Lila.
Taken less than five minutes earlier.
She was asleep in her bed.
I called Marco.
He looked at the image.
His face hardened.
“The feed should've been isolated.”
“It isn't.”
We raced home.
Lila was safe.
Rosa was safe.
Bianca was sitting beside our daughter's bed.
But embedded inside the decorative molding across the room, Marco found a camera smaller than a shirt button.
Then another.
And another.
By midnight, we had found seventeen hidden devices throughout the house.
One inside my office.
One inside the kitchen.
One facing Bianca's dressing room.
One above Lila's bed.
None had been installed recently.
The oldest had likely been there for years.
I stood beneath the last camera while Marco removed it.
“Who had access during construction?”
He looked at me.
“Lots of people.”
“Give me names.”
“I already started.”
Bianca appeared in the doorway.
She had been crying again.
“Vincent.”
I turned.
She held something in her hand.
A photograph.
Old.
Creased.
She walked toward me and gave it to me.
My father stood in the center.
Beside him was Bianca's father.
Between them sat a metal case.
“What is this?”
“My father called it the Ledger.”
I looked at her.
“What ledger?”
“The reason Adrian disappeared.”
And as Bianca began telling me a story our fathers had buried twenty-five years earlier, I finally understood why someone had chosen Lila instead of me.
They weren't trying to kill my daughter.
They were using her suffering as leverage.
Because somewhere, hidden beneath decades of Moretti secrets, was something they believed only I could find.
May you like
And whoever had built those cameras intended to keep taking Lila's sight until I did.
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