Chapter 5 - The Trap Springs
"Up!" Aleandro barked, grabbing Hannah by the arm and pulling her back toward the ladder with shocking force.
They ran through the dark, their boots slapping against the damp timber planks, the beam of Hannah’s flashlight bouncing wildly off the ancient brick walls. Above them, two more shots rang out in rapid succession—the sharp, metallic pop of a nine-millimeter weapon, followed by a heavy, wet thud that vibrated through the iron rungs of the ladder.
Aleandro reached the base of the shaft first. He grabbed the iron rungs and hauled himself up four steps at a time, his jacket swinging open to reveal a custom, silver-plated snub-nosed revolver tucked into a leather shoulder holster.
"Stay behind me!" he commanded down to Hannah.
When Aleandro’s head cleared the lip of the kitchen floor, the scene that greeted him was absolute chaos.
The heavy steel pantry door had been slammed shut, but through the glass observation panel, the kitchen was visible. The halogen lights were dead; the room was bathed in the harsh, rotating red glare of the emergency backup lighting.
On the kitchen floor, lying near the marble island, was Franco, one of the security guards who had accompanied Gabriel to the basement. He was clutching his shoulder, blood pooling black against the red emergency lights.
Maximus was throw-weighting himself against the reinforced glass of the pantry door, his two-hundred-pound body hitting the frame with enough force to make the steel hinges groan.
"Max!" Aleandro roared, hauling himself fully out of the hole and turning to pull Hannah up by her forearm.
The dog instantly backed off, dropping to his haunches, his lips drawn back over sharp, ivory teeth, his body trembling with violent fury.
Aleandro moved to the pantry door, drawing his revolver, his thumb pulling back the hammer with a clean, lethal click. He peered through the thick, wire-reinforced glass.
Standing near the main security console at the far side of the kitchen were three men. Two were junior security guards who had been hired six months ago. The third was Gabriel Moretti.
Gabriel was holding a heavy industrial laptop in his left hand, a high-capacity USB drive dangling from its side port. In his right hand, he held a black, suppressed pistol aimed directly at the chest of Marco, the cook, who was kneeling on the floor with his hands clasped behind his head.
"Gabriel!" Aleandro’s voice boomed through the pantry’s intercom speaker, amplified by the emergency public address system.
Gabriel froze. He slowly turned his head toward the pantry window, his face illuminated by the harsh red glare of the warning beacons. He did not look surprised. He looked tired.
"Aleandro," Gabriel’s voice came back through the two-way speaker, flat and tinny. "You shouldn't have come back up. You should have stayed in the tunnel."
"You built the tap," Aleandro said, his voice eerily calm, his eyes locked on his childhood friend through the thick glass. "You took money from the Russians. Or was it the federal prosecutor in Newark?"
Gabriel let out a short, hollow laugh that sounded like dry leaves dragging across concrete. "The Russians don't have this kind of money, Aleandro. And the Feds are too poor. Do you have any idea what the Moretti family offered me for the real-time audio feeds of your sit-downs?"
Aleandro’s grip on his revolver didn't falter by a millimeter. "My uncle Vincent. He paid you to bug my study."
"He offered me thirty percent of the Atlantic City docks," Gabriel said, stepping closer to the glass, holding the laptop up so Aleandro could see the glowing green progress bar on the screen. "Thirty percent, Aleandro! You kept me on a leash for fifteen years! I managed your security, I took your bullets, I wiped your blood off the car seats, and you paid me a salary like a glorified doorman!"
"I gave you my trust," Aleandro said softly.
"Trust doesn't buy a estate in Capri!" Gabriel shouted, his composure suddenly snapping, his eyes widening with wild, frantic greed. "The download is ninety percent complete. Every account code, every offshore shell company, every name on your payroll for the last ten years is on this drive. In two minutes, it auto-syncs to Vincent's server in Miami. And there's nothing you can do through that three-inch bulletproof glass."
Hannah, standing behind Aleandro in the dim light of the pantry, looked at the heavy steel door frame, then at the electrical panel mounted on the wall to her left.
"Mr. Vitali," she whispered, leaning close to his ear so the intercom wouldn't pick up her voice.
Aleandro didn't turn his head. "What?"
"The emergency lighting," she whispered, pointing her finger at the grey junction box beside the spice rack. "The red lights are running on the secondary battery bank. But the pantry intercom and the door actuators are tied into the main kitchen circuit."
Aleandro’s eyes flicked to the panel. "Which circuit?"
"The fifty-amp line," Hannah murmured, her eyes wide with sudden, brilliant realization. "The line they tapped down in the tunnel! The tap isn't just drawing power—it’s back-feeding into the kitchen’s main sub-panel to hide its voltage footprint from your main meters!"
Aleandro’s brain, sharp as a razor, caught her meaning instantly. "If we ground that line..."
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"It will send a twenty-thousand-volt surge straight back through the fiber-optic converter," Hannah said, her fingers already reaching for a pair of heavy, rubber-handled wire cutters sitting in a maintenance tool drawer under the shelf. "It won't just blow the pantry door open. It will fry every digital storage drive connected to the kitchen grid."
Including Gabriel’s laptop.
