Chapter 6 - The Adriatic Cold
The meeting room in Trieste was not a glass-and-steel boardroom forty stories above the street.
It was the back room of a seafood restaurant near the old canal basin, where the walls were dark stone, the air smelled of fried squid and salt, and the low ceiling held the humidity of the harbor. Rain battered against the small, iron-barred windows.
Dominic sat at the head of a long wooden table. Mave sat two seats to his left, her leather notebook open, a slender silver pen resting between her fingers.
Across from them sat Old Man Moretti—a frail-looking man of seventy with thin white hair and eyes like gray pebbles—and his two sons, Gian and Marko. Gian was broad-shouldered and wore a heavy leather jacket; Marko was younger, skinnier, with a sharp, twitching nose and a nervous habit of tapping his heavy gold ring against his wine glass.
Beside Dominic sat Arthur, his Oxford-educated regional director. Arthur was forty-five, wore a three-piece linen suit despite the cold drizzle outside, and looked thoroughly pleased with himself.
"Mr. Rossy," Arthur said in smooth, melodic Italian, turning to Dominic with a warm smile. "As I informed you in New York, Signor Moretti has agreed to transfer sixty percent of the rail spur rights for the agreed sum of twelve million euros."
Old Man Moretti nodded slowly, taking a sip of red wine. He spoke in slow, polite Italian. "It is a fair deal for both families. The rail lines are clean. The customs officers are paid."
Arthur turned to Dominic, whispering in English: "He says the operations are fully compliant and ready for immediate integration."
Dominic didn't sign. He didn't reach for his pen.
He looked at Marko, the younger son, who had just leaned sideways to whisper something into his brother Gian’s ear.
The dialect they were using was thick, marshy, and heavily clipped—the Resian dialect of the Julian Alps, a linguistic island that fewer than two thousand people spoke fluently. It was a language designed for mountain valleys where sound carried far and secrets had to be kept from foreign soldiers.
Mave knew it.
She had spent six months in a mountain laundry house near Tarvisio when she was twenty-two, washing uniforms for the long-haul truckers who moved goods between Austria, Slovenia, and Italy.
Marko tapped his gold ring against his glass: Clack. Clack. Clack.
“The idiot in the blue suit thinks the papers are original,” Marko whispered to Gian in Resian, his voice barely audible beneath the sound of rain against the bars. “He doesn't know the police seized the third spur yesterday morning. If the Americans put their trains on those tracks by Friday, the Guardia di Finanza will arrest their drivers, not ours.”
Gian didn't turn his head. “Is the cash moving through the Austrian bank?”
“Yes,” Marko muttered with a dark chuckle. “Once the wire hits Salzburg, the old man signs the bankruptcy papers. The Americans get the liability, we get twelve million, and the police get their bust.”
Mave didn't move a muscle in her face.
Her pen remained motionless over her paper. She didn't gasp. She didn't look at Arthur. She kept her eyes focused on the bottom left corner of her notepad.
Arthur leaned over to Dominic again, holding out a sleek silver Montblanc pen. "Mr. Rossy, if you sign section four, we can finalize the escrow transfer before the bank closes in Zurich."
Dominic looked at Mave.
He didn't ask a question out loud. He simply turned his head three inches, his dark eyes meeting hers with a silent, questioning intensity.
Mave slowly lifted her pen.
She didn't speak. Instead, she wrote six words on the top sheet of her pad in clear, neat block letters, then slid the pad two inches to the right, into Dominic’s line of sight.
Spur three seized yesterday. Paper fake.
Dominic’s eyes swept over the words.
His hand, which had been reaching for Arthur’s Montblanc pen, stopped in mid-air.
Arthur blinked, looking annoyed. "Mrs. Miller, please. We are in the middle of a high-level closing. Do not interrupt the flow of—"
Dominic raised his left hand. The simple, small gesture instantly cut Arthur off mid-sentence.
Dominic leaned back in his heavy wooden chair. He picked up his glass of sparkling water, took a small sip, and set it down.
"Signor Moretti," Dominic said. He spoke in English, his voice perfectly calm, perfectly flat.
Arthur prepared to translate into Italian, but Dominic held up a finger, stopping him.
"Marko," Dominic said, looking directly at the younger son with the twitching nose. "Tell your brother Gian that if he thinks the Guardia di Finanza is going to arrest my drivers on Friday, he is making a very expensive mistake."
The wine glass in Marko’s hand slipped.
It didn't shatter, but it hit the heavy wooden table with a harsh CLACK, spilling deep red liquid across the white linen napkin.
May you like
Old Man Moretti’s head snapped toward his son.
The silence in the seafood restaurant’s back room became heavy, cold, and absolute.
