Chapter 5: The Dead Brother’s Files
1996 Words
Chapter 5: The Dead Brother’s Files
****Dante’s Point of View****
The rain hadn’t stopped for days. It beat against the safehouse roof like a war drum, unrelenting, tapping out the rhythm of old ghosts.
I hadn’t slept. Not really. Sleep meant dreams, and dreams meant Matteo—his voice, his laugh, the blood on his lips, the way he reached for me and whispered, “Don’t let them bury the truth.”
I never did.
But truth was tricky. It didn’t shout. It whispered. It hid. And sometimes, it disguised itself as pain.
The flash drive Matteo left behind wasn’t just encrypted. It was buried in layers of firewalls and trap codes that would destroy its contents if handled by anyone unfamiliar. Fortunately, I’d spent the last three years learning how Matteo thought.
He always left keys in plain sight. Not physical ones—ideological ones. Songs he referenced in passing. Books we read together. Old chess moves we debated. Every one a breadcrumb.
I sat cross-legged on the floor of the den, the old laptop humming beside me. Isabelle had left to take a shower; Silas was on recon. The silence felt sacred.
A blue folder appeared on the desktop.
VALE.
My breath caught.
I double-clicked.
Inside were dozens of files, some labeled, some coded. Surveillance footage, audio logs, PDFs, photos. The deeper I scrolled, the tighter my chest became.
Because it wasn’t just about Victor Raze.
It was about Isabelle.
Matteo had been tracking her, protecting her, months before I even knew she was in the picture.
One video, timestamped nearly four years ago, showed Isabelle walking through a corridor inside the Raze estate. She looked younger. Fragile. Her arms were crossed, her expression wary. A man—Victor, I assumed—was out of frame, but she nodded to him like a soldier taking orders.
Then she looked directly into the camera.
“I know this is being watched,” she said softly. “If you’re seeing this, please help me. I can’t leave on my own. He’s promised me to Luca. But Luca... he’s not who they think he is.”
My throat closed.
Another file. This one, audio.
Matteo’s voice.
“She’s not the enemy. She’s the target. She’s the one they’ll use to bring everything down if we don’t get her out. Victor is grooming her for Luca, but he doesn’t know she’s been copying documents, logging shipments. She’s trying to get free the only way she knows how. I think she knows she won’t survive it.”
I leaned back against the wall. The laptop slid off my lap onto the carpet.
Everything changed.
I had thought Isabelle was part of it. A doll dressed in silk and diamonds, complicit because she lived among them. But Matteo—my brother, the one person who never lied—had seen her for what she truly was:
A prisoner.
A spy.
A survivor.
A weapon.
And I… I had chained her up. Treated her like a piece on my own chessboard.
I rubbed my hands over my face. The guilt washed in like a tide. I’d used her. I’d distrusted her. And still, she had saved my life.
I heard footsteps behind me.
I turned.
Isabelle stood at the doorway, towel around her neck, skin damp, eyes narrowed. She looked like she had questions.
I had no right to ask any more of her.
But I needed to.
I motioned to the laptop.
“I watched the files. Matteo… he was protecting you.”
She didn’t flinch.
“He told me once,” she said, voice low. “That if anything ever happened, he’d make sure someone knew the truth.”
I swallowed. “Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”
“Because you would’ve used it against me,” she replied, walking into the room. “Just like you used me to bait Victor. Just like you wanted to use me to draw Luca out.”
“I was wrong.”
She stared.
“I know that now.”
She crossed her arms. “Then what do we do?”
“We burn them,” I said. “Every last one of them.”
---
That night, I couldn’t sleep. Not because of the nightmares, but because of what I saw in her eyes.
Not fear.
Not pain.
Determination.
The kind that turns survivors into executioners.
I downloaded the files to a backup drive. Every name, every ledger, every coded conversation between Victor and his buyers. It was all here. Evidence enough to start a war—or end one.
Then I found one last video.
It was the day Matteo died.
The camera was shaky. He was running. Breathing hard. Gunfire in the distance. He ducked into a cellar and turned the camera on himself.
“If this gets out, it means I didn’t make it,” he said. “Victor thinks he can erase me. But he won’t erase you, Dante. He won’t erase the truth. Isabelle’s not just part of the system—she’s the crack in it. Protect her. Or everything I did was for nothing.”
The screen went black.
My eyes burned.
I shut the laptop.
And I made a promise.
I would protect her.
Even from myself.
****Isabelle’s Point of View****
Water traced rivulets down my arms as I stood beneath the shower, but I wasn’t trying to wash away the grime. I was trying to rinse the guilt from my bones. And it clung tighter than any blood.
I remembered Matteo. Not the way others did. Not the smiling ghost beside Dante in the worn family photos.
I remembered his hands—shaking slightly the day he slipped me a burner phone. I remembered the way he whispered, “You're smarter than all of them.”
I remembered what he risked for me.
And I remembered his eyes, the last time I saw them, full of urgency. Like he knew the end was already chasing him.
Dante didn’t know. He couldn’t.
He thought I was a traitor, or a puppet. I could live with that.
What I couldn’t live with was the knowledge that I was part of the reason Matteo was dead.
Because I wasn’t fast enough.
I wrapped a towel around my shoulders and stepped back into the den, water still dripping down my spine. Dante was there, face pale, eyes haunted. The laptop was open on his knees, and Matteo’s voice was playing.
I froze.
He looked up.
“I watched the files,” he said quietly. “Matteo… he was protecting you.”
I didn’t flinch. I couldn’t afford to. Not with this war on our doorstep.
“He told me once,” I said. “If anything ever happened, he’d make sure someone knew the truth.”
Dante looked… wrecked. Not broken, not the way Victor had broken men. But stripped. Rebuilt. He was shifting.
Changing.
I crossed my arms. “Then what do we do?”
“We burn them,” he said. “Every last one of them.”
I nodded.
That night, I stared at the ceiling, listening to the storm.
I thought about what it meant to be free.
It wasn’t about escaping walls. It wasn’t about pulling a trigger. It wasn’t about watching Victor bleed, though I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want that.
It was about taking control of the narrative. About refusing to be a weapon without aim.
Matteo had seen that in me.
Dante saw it now too.
And that made me dangerous.
****Third-Person Point of View****
The storm outside was more than weather—it was prophecy.
Within the walls of the Sea Glass Casino, Luca Moretti sat in a leather armchair, untouched by the thunder that cracked above the Atlantic. The lights inside were golden, filtered through crystal and decadence. But beneath that glittering shell, his eyes remained cold.
He read the latest intel on a thin tablet resting on the velvet-lined table beside him. Surveillance feeds, encrypted chatter, photos. One caught his eye—the unmistakable silhouette of Dante Vale entering a weapons drop site in Newark.
Luca tilted his head, tapping a finger against the image. “So you’re finally stepping into the light, old friend.”
Across the room, Marcus Vellini entered with a quiet nod.
“The girl hasn’t surfaced again,” Marcus reported. “But our mole confirmed the drive is real. Matteo’s files have been unlocked.”
Luca set the tablet down slowly. “Then the real game begins.”
He rose, adjusting the cuffs of his silk shirt. “Victor always thought he could hide behind the girl. But she was never his to control. She was a fuse. And Dante? He’s the flame.”
---
At the same time, in a remote compound north of the city, Victor Raze stood in front of a darkened screen. His expression was unreadable. The screen blinked, then a video file began to play.
Matteo Vale’s face appeared, bloody but defiant, speaking directly into the camera.
Victor didn’t blink.
His son, Elijah Raze, stood nearby. Silent. Watching. Absorbing everything.
“You knew this would happen,” Elijah said quietly.
Victor finally nodded. “Dante was always too much like his brother. It was only a matter of time before he found the files.”
Elijah stepped closer. “Do we eliminate him?”
Victor’s eyes narrowed. “No. Not yet. We let the tension build. We let him believe he’s winning.”
“And Isabelle?”
Victor turned slowly. “She’s no longer a pawn. She’s a wild card. And wild cards are most dangerous when they don’t know who’s holding the deck.”
He tapped the screen again. Matteo’s voice echoed one final time:
“Isabelle’s the crack in the system.”
Victor smiled faintly. “Then we’ll seal the crack… or bury it.”
---
Meanwhile, back in the safehouse, Silas returned from his recon trip, his coat soaked through and blood trailing down his arm.
Dante moved fast, helping him to the chair.
“What happened?”
Silas winced. “We’re not the only ones chasing Matteo’s files. Someone else is hitting Raze’s couriers. Precision jobs. Military clean.”
Dante’s jaw clenched. “Victor?”
Silas shook his head. “Too messy for him. And too fast.”
Isabelle stood near the doorway, listening. She stepped forward. “Luca.”
Both men turned to her.
She nodded. “He’s sending a message. Letting us know he’s back on the board.”
Dante’s mind raced. If Luca was targeting Raze’s clean-up crews, it meant one thing—he didn’t want the files destroyed.
He wanted them exposed.
Isabelle read the same conclusion on Dante’s face.
“He’s not after revenge,” she said. “He’s after collapse. He wants to inherit the ruin.”
Silas groaned as he shifted. “You think he’ll come after us directly?”
Dante glanced toward the window, where lightning lit up the skyline.
“No. Not yet. He’ll wait. He’s a showman. He’ll want an audience.”
Isabelle added, “And a stage.”
---
Hours later, in a high-rise overlooking the harbor, Luca stood before a table of investors, each one more dangerous than the next. Arms dealers, mercenaries, ex-political figures—all connected to the Raze empire in one way or another.
He tapped the table.
“Gentlemen, the age of Victor is ending. You can stay loyal to a relic… or invest in the man with the future in his hands.”
He activated a screen behind him. Matteo’s files displayed like holy scripture.
Gasps. Murmurs. Faces turning pale.
Luca smiled.
“Dante has the originals. But I have the reach. I can offer you protection. Continuity. And something no one else can...”
He pressed a button.
Isabelle’s photo appeared.
“The girl,” he said. “She’s the key to everything. And I will have her back.”
- Writer
