Chapter 5 - Unraveling the Ledger
Carlo slowly raised his hands away from his lapel, his suave demeanor evaporating into a sneer of pure venom. "You think you're a god, Dante, but you're just a dinosaur sitting on a hoard you don't even know how to run anymore. Evan Hayes was a weakling. He found out where the offshore transfers were going and threatened to bring the hard drives to you. What was I supposed to do? Let a pencil-pusher ruin five years of planning?"
"You could have faced me," Dante said, rising from his chair like an awakening shadow. "Instead, you put a gun in my hand and made me shoot a loyal man."
"Loyalty doesn't pay for private islands, Dante!" Carlo spat, leaning across the table. "You think stopping me here changes anything? The transport at eleven-thirty isn't heading to your vault. My men already rerouted the armored trucks twenty minutes ago. The drivers work for me. The dock cargo is already cleared for departure to Panama. You have no money left, Dante. By nightfall, your captains won't even answer your calls."
Dante didn't flinch. He walked over to the sideboard and picked up Marcus’s tablet. "You always were arrogant about digital security, Carlo. You forgot that Evan didn't just build the camera loop detection. He built the entire financial infrastructure of the Moretti family."
Dante turned the screen toward Carlo. The display showed a series of automated bank transfer overrides executing in real-time. Millions of dollars were disappearing from Carlo's hidden offshore accounts, funneling back into the family’s central escrow vault.
"How... how are you bypassing my encryption keys?" Carlo stammered, his eyes bulging as he watched his entire life’s fortune get wiped clean in thirty seconds.
"Because your password wasn't a secret to Evan," Dante said coldly. "He left a master recovery sequence buried inside the firmware of an old brass pocket watch he gave to his seven-year-old daughter. The moment Marcus plugged the watch’s serial interface into the terminal, Evan’s dead-man protocol woke up. It hunted down every account touched by the rogue maintenance ID you used last year. It took your money, your shell companies, and the GPS coordinates of your ambush team at the docks."
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Carlo lunged forward in a desperate attempt to flip the heavy dining table, but Marcus moved with lightning speed, striking him with the butt of his weapon. Carlo crashed to the floor, gasping for air, pinned under the boots of the men he had thought he could outsmart.
"Lock him in the wine cellar," Dante ordered without looking back. "The same room where he had Evan tied to a chair. Don't give him water until I tell you."
