Chapter 5 - The Glass Tower
The transition from a navy blue smock to a tailored charcoal suit did not happen overnight, but it happened fast enough to make Mave’s head spin.
Three days after the incident on the forty-second floor, a black sedan arrived at her apartment building in Astoria at 6:00 a.m. The driver, a silent man named Frank with a white scar running from his left temple down to his collar, opened the rear door without a word.
Mave stepped inside, carrying only a small leather handbag. Her daughter, Leo, was now enrolled in a private day-school in Manhattan—a detail handled by one of Dominic’s administrative assistants with a single phone call and a cashier's check that represented twice Mave's former annual salary.
The sedan brought her to a midtown high-rise that bore no name on its granite facade.
There were no plastic buckets here. No ammonia. The floors were polished dark slate, reflecting the recessed warm lights of the private lobby.
"Mrs. Miller," a voice said as she stepped out of the private elevator on the fifty-fifth floor.
Dominic Rossy was sitting behind a glass desk that overlooked the East River. The room was vast, cold, and smelled faintly of expensive cigar leaf and fresh wool.
"Mr. Rossy," Mave acknowledged, stopping three feet from the desk.
She was wearing a dark gray trousersuit she had bought at a department store two days ago. It wasn't bespoke armor like Dominic’s, but it was clean, simple, and allowed her to move quickly if necessary.
"You look different without the brush," Dominic said, looking up from a thick leather-bound dossier.
"I feel lighter," Mave replied. "Where are we going?"
Dominic closed the dossier with a dry thud. "Trieste."
Mave’s jaw tightened slightly. Trieste was a port city on the northeastern edge of Italy, a place where three borders collided: Italy, Slovenia, and the Adriatic Sea. It was a famous washing machine for illegal money, timber, and arms moving from the Balkans into Western Europe.
"Who are we meeting?" she asked.
"The Moretti family," Dominic said, standing up and buttoning his jacket. "They control the rail yards near the docks. Old man Moretti speaks standard Italian, but his sons—the three who actually run the crews—were raised in the hills above Koper. They speak a local Slovenian dialect mixed with old Venetian slang."
He walked around the desk, stopping two feet from her.
"My previous regional director assured me the Morettis are ready to sell their stake in the container terminals," Dominic said. "He says the contract is ready for signature."
Mave looked into his dark, steady eyes. "And you don't believe him?"
"My regional director," Dominic said softly, "was educated at Oxford. He speaks beautiful, elegant Italian. He thinks everyone in the Adriatic speaks like a poet."
"He sounds like Charles," Mave remarked.
"He does," Dominic agreed. "Which is why you are coming with me. You will sit in the room. You will wear a silver lapel pin that marks you as my junior risk consultant. You will keep your mouth shut until I ask you a question."
"And if they ask why I'm not talking?"
"Tell them you're evaluating their operational efficiency," Dominic said, handing her a leather folder containing maps, corporate names, and port manifests. "A woman who listens and says nothing terrifies men who have something to hide."
Mave took the folder. She opened it, her eyes skimming the Italian names, the shipping codes, and the listed land parcels.
"This manifest is four months old," she noted instantly, her finger stopping on a column of cargo numbers.
Dominic paused, his coat halfway onto his shoulders. "What?"
"The customs seal code here—TS-884-A," Mave said, pointing to the small red stamp on the corner of the document. "That seal series was retired by the Italian Port Authority last October after a corruption bust in Ancona. If they're using those stamps on these terminal documents, these aren't active commercial rail lines. They're abandoned spurs being used for off-the-books storage."
Dominic stared at her for five full seconds.
May you like
He didn't call his legal team. He didn't look at his iPad. He simply reached out, took his coat the rest of the way on, and adjusted his cuffs.
"The flight leaves in two hours," Dominic said, a cold spark of satisfaction dancing in his eyes. "Bring two notebooks, Mave. We’re going to have a very long conversation with the Moretti family."
