The discovery that the Syndicate had been inside their systems for years triggered a new wave of paranoia in our team. Nyx started an in-depth investigation of every server, device, and line of code in the Moretti empire, searching for the ghost's signature.
Two days after the auction, the Curator made his first move. It wasn't a bomb or an assassin. It was something much more sneaky.
I was working on my laptop in the war room, trying to trace the origins of Alistair Finch's hidden fortune when a new, encrypted file suddenly appeared on my desktop. It hadn't come through the network; it seemed to materialize out of nowhere.
"Nyx!" I called out, my heart racing.
She was at my side in an instant, her eyes wide. "That's impossible. This network is air-gapped. Nothing gets in."
"He's not getting in," she whispered, her face pale as she checked the file's properties. "He was already here. This isn't an intrusion. It's a dead drop. The ghost code in your system just activated, delivered the package, and erased itself."
It was a message. A clear, undeniable show of power: I can reach you anywhere. You are never safe.
Dante walked over, his expression grim. "Open it."
Nyx spent ten minutes breaking through layers of encryption. Finally, the file opened. It contained a single scanned document. It was a page from a ship's manifest, dated one week before his parents' murder. It detailed a cargo shipment from a Moretti-owned warehouse, cleared for release by his father, Antonio Moretti. The destination was an untraceable port in North Africa. The cargo was labeled as "agricultural equipment."
But tucked into the corner of the manifest was a handwritten note, initialed by the port authority. It said: "Contents verified. Military-grade munitions. Per A.M. directive."
Time froze. I looked at Dante. The blood had drained from his face, leaving him ghostly pale. The man he had spent his life avenging, the proud, honorable patriarch whose murder had defined him, was an arms dealer?
"It's a lie," Dante growled, his voice raw. "It's a fabrication. A trick to destabilize us."
"I can check the port authority archives to see if the original document exists," Elias offered gently.
"Do it," Dante commanded, his jaw so tight I thought it might break. He turned and walked out of the room, the lie—or the truth—of the document injecting poison into the heart of his entire life's mission. The Curator hadn't sent a threat. He had sent a memory. And it was a memory that threatened to burn Dante's world down from within.