CHAPTER V - THE PRINCE OF THE ENEMY FAMILY
1750 Words
For weeks, Iris hunted one name that appeared again and again in her investigation.
Every trail she uncovered after discovering her father's final letter seemed to lead back to the same family. Financial records, encrypted communications, hidden shipping routes, and old intelligence reports all shared one connection.
The Romano family.
Whenever the black crown appeared, their name was never far behind.
Yet despite months of searching, they remained strangely untouched by every major conflict. Rival syndicates had collapsed. Corrupt officials had disappeared. Entire criminal networks had turned against one another.
The Romanos endured.
That alone made Iris suspicious.
One name surfaced more often than the rest.
Silas Romano.
The only son of the Romano family.
According to every piece of evidence she had gathered, the Romanos had financed the team that attacked her childhood home. Their money had paid for the weapons, the vehicles, and the mercenaries who killed her biological parents. After that, they had quietly disappeared from public view.
She revisited the records hidden inside the underground vault.
Large transfers of money had passed through shell corporations connected to the Romano shipping empire only days before the attack on her family's estate. The transactions had been carefully disguised, but her father's journals contained enough fragments to expose the pattern.
Someone wanted the payments hidden.
Someone had succeeded.
Iris was certain of one thing.
Silas knew why.
Unlike most of the people she had investigated, Silas rarely appeared in public photographs. News articles mentioned him only in passing, and official records described him as little more than an executive managing overseas investments.
The image was convincing.
Too convincing.
Dante had once warned her that the most dangerous people were often the ones history barely remembered.
She watched him for nine days.
Unlike his family's reputation, Silas lived without an army of bodyguards. He moved carefully, changed routes every day, and never stayed in one place longer than an hour.
He avoided routine with almost obsessive discipline.
Sometimes he entered crowded train stations only to leave through a different exit without boarding anything. Other days he abandoned expensive cars and continued on foot through busy streets before disappearing into alleyways.
He checked reflections in shop windows.
Paused before turning corners.
Frequently looked behind him without making it obvious.
It wasn't arrogance.
It was survival.
Whoever he feared was dangerous enough to make constant caution seem normal.
By the ninth day, Iris had learned enough.
She knew exactly when he would briefly pass through an abandoned railway station no longer used by commuters.
Broken lights hung from cracked ceilings, and rust covered the old tracks beneath layers of dust. The station had long since become another forgotten corner of the city.
Perfect for a confrontation.
Iris finally confronted him beneath an abandoned railway station.
By the time Silas realized he had been followed, it was too late.
She disarmed him before he could draw his pistol, forced him to his knees, and secured his hands behind his back.
His weapon slid across the concrete floor.
He never struggled.
The barrel of her handgun rested against his forehead.
"Who ordered my parents' murder?"
Silas stared at her.
Then he smiled.
A quiet, almost disappointed smile.
Not the smile of a guilty man.
The smile of someone who had expected this meeting for a very long time.
Iris tightened her grip.
"You think this is funny?"
He laughed.
Not loudly.
Not mockingly.
More like someone watching another person walk into a trap.
"You've spent years chasing ghosts," he said.
Iris's voice turned cold.
"My father trusted your family."
"And your father was smarter than all of us."
His answer only fueled her anger.
"You expect me to believe the Romanos had nothing to do with it?"
"We were involved."
Silas nodded without hesitation.
"But not the way you think."
Iris struck him across the face.
Blood dripped from the corner of his mouth.
He looked back at her without fear.
"If you wanted revenge," he said calmly, "you should've killed me five minutes ago."
"Then give me one reason not to."
"Because you're hunting the wrong people."
Silence settled between them.
Only the distant sound of dripping water echoed through the abandoned station.
Iris had heard lies before.
This sounded different.
Not desperate.
Not frightened.
Certain.
The certainty unsettled her more than any denial could have.
She searched his jacket and found a small encrypted flash drive hidden inside the lining.
It had been sewn into the fabric so carefully that she nearly missed it.
"What is this?"
"The reason I'm still alive."
Iris narrowed her eyes.
"Explain."
"I can't."
"Then you die."
"You won't."
Silas met her gaze.
"Because once you watch what's on that drive nothing you've believed will survive."
For several seconds neither of them moved.
Finally, Iris lowered the gun just enough to force him to stand.
She blindfolded him before leading him away from the station through several different routes designed to ensure they weren't being followed.
Even then, she checked every mirror and intersection.
Someone was always watching.
She took Silas to one of her father's abandoned safe houses.
The house looked abandoned from the outside, hidden between aging apartment buildings scheduled for demolition. Inside, however, emergency generators still worked, surveillance cameras remained active, and reinforced doors protected every entrance.
She checked the flash drive for trackers, hidden malware, and transmitters before connecting it to an isolated computer.
The computer had never touched the internet.
No outside signal could reach it.
Only one file appeared.
No title.
No date.
She opened it.
The screen filled with grainy black-and-white security footage.
Static briefly distorted the image before it stabilized.
A timestamp showed it had been recorded twenty years earlier.
The camera overlooked a private conference room inside an old shipping terminal.
The building matched several photographs Iris had seen inside her father's journals.
She immediately recognized the man who entered first.
Her biological father.
He looked younger but unmistakable.
He carried himself with the same quiet confidence described throughout the journals.
Several minutes later, four other people entered the room.
One represented the Romano family.
Another was the leader of a powerful cartel.
The remaining two faces had been intentionally blurred.
Someone had deliberately concealed their identities.
Iris expected an argument.
Instead, everyone stood as her father entered.
He wasn't their prisoner.
He was leading the meeting.
Even without audio, respect filled the room.
No one interrupted him.
No one challenged him openly.
The footage had no audio, but their expressions told the story.
Her father placed several folders on the table.
He spoke.
The others objected.
Then he handed each of them a sealed envelope.
One by one...
They agreed.
The entire negotiation lasted several hours.
Maps were unfolded.
Documents exchanged hands.
Several signatures appeared on papers that couldn't be read through the poor camera quality.
Whatever agreement had been reached, it changed every person inside that room.
Iris leaned closer to the screen.
The recording skipped ahead.
Hours later, the meeting ended.
The others left.
Only her father remained.
He stared directly toward the security camera.
As if he knew someone would eventually watch the recording.
His expression was calm.
Almost resigned.
Then he did something Iris couldn't understand.
He removed a folded document from his coat.
Signed it.
And burned it in an ashtray.
The flames slowly consumed every page until nothing remained except ash.
The final frames showed him writing one sentence on a sheet of paper before placing it inside a sealed envelope.
The video ended.
The screen faded to black.
Iris froze.
The silence inside the safe house suddenly felt overwhelming.
"What was that?" she whispered.
Silas answered from across the room.
"The beginning."
Iris turned sharply toward him.
"My father was negotiating with them."
"No."
"He was giving orders."
She shook her head.
"That's impossible."
"You've read his journals."
"Yes."
"And how many of them were complete?"
Iris said nothing.
Her thoughts immediately returned to the underground vault.
The missing pages.
The carefully cut journals.
The mysterious reference to the council.
Silas continued.
"Your father wasn't betrayed by the Romano family."
"He trusted them."
"They trusted him."
Iris's pulse quickened.
"Then who killed him?"
Silas lowered his voice.
"That's the question he wanted you to ask."
She stepped closer.
"What do you mean?"
Silas looked directly at her.
"Your father arranged everything."
The words struck harder than any weapon.
Iris stared at him in disbelief.
"My father would never sacrifice his own family."
"I didn't say he wanted them dead."
Silas's expression darkened.
"I said he arranged the events that put every piece into motion."
His voice remained steady.
As though he had carried this truth alone for years.
Silas's thoughts raced.
"No..."
"He created false alliances."
"No."
"He moved money between syndicates."
"Stop."
"He planted evidence."
"Enough!"
Iris slammed her fist onto the table.
The computer monitor shook.
The room fell silent.
She struggled to steady her breathing.
Everything she had believed suddenly felt uncertain.
Silas waited until her breathing steadied.
"Ask yourself one question."
"If your father truly controlled every major syndicate..."
"...how did anyone manage to betray him without him seeing it coming?"
Iris couldn't answer.
Because she had already asked herself that question a hundred times.
There had never been a logical explanation.
Until now.
The possibility terrified her.
Not because it proved Silas right.
Because it explained too much.
Silas reached into his pocket slowly.
Iris instinctively aimed her gun.
He stopped.
"Relax."
He nodded toward the computer screen.
"There's another file."
Iris frowned.
"There was only one."
"No."
"You didn't look hard enough."
She searched the drive again.
This time she ignored the visible folders and examined the encrypted partitions hidden beneath the surface.
Hidden beneath layers of encrypted data was a second file she had missed.
Its title contained only three words.
FOR IRIS ONLY.
The cursor hovered above the file.
For several long seconds, Iris couldn't bring herself to click it.
Every discovery since entering the underground vault had destroyed another piece of the life she thought she understood.
She suddenly realized that whatever waited inside this file might erase everything that remained.
For the first time since her journey began, Iris feared the truth more than the people trying to kill her.
If Silas was right...
Then her father hadn't merely been a victim of the conspiracy.
He had deliberately set the entire game in motion.
And Iris had been following the path he designed long before she ever knew it existed.
- Writer
