The Donna's Last Confession

Chapter 4 The Silent Checkmate

Alex Vance nodded once and led me through the steel door. Screens covered the safe-house walls, each one streaming account data.

“This way, Mrs. Moretti.” He pointed to a terminal in the center of the room.

“It’s Ms. Rossi now. I’d like to begin.”

He stepped aside. A military-grade laptop waited on the desk. I sat down and placed my fingers on the keyboard.

For the next hour, I opened the Moretti empire account by account: Cayman holdings, Panama shell companies, ghost payrolls in Vegas.

I unlocked the ledgers, then pulled up recordings of Riccardo ordering hits on his rivals.

The senior agents stopped talking. Years of investigations were now open on the screens in front of them.

“It’s almost done,” I said, my eyes fixed on the screen. “All primary and secondary networks are compromised. We control them.”

“Almost?” Alex’s voice was sharp. He leaned closer, pointing to a single, pulsing red node on the map. “What’s that?”

“The main holding account in Zurich. It’s firewalled with a dynamic key, so any transfer requires Riccardo’s live token. Without it, we can’t freeze the funds.”

An agent swore under his breath. “The gala at The Plaza. He’ll have the token on him. If he gets a single alert, he can move everything in ninety seconds. We’ll lose it all.”

Alex looked at the clock on the wall. 7:40 PM. “He and Elena are scheduled to take the stage at eight.”

Twenty minutes.

No one spoke. We had twenty minutes and no live token.

“He has a contingency password. A deep-level override he created for a doomsday scenario. He thinks no one knows it exists.”

“Can you access it?” Alex asked.

I moved to the input field. Riccardo reused anything he considered his. That included my memories.

I typed in the password: M-A-R-I-A-1-9-9-8.

1998 was the year Matron Maria saved my life when a fever nearly killed me.

I had told Riccardo the story one summer night, back when I believed I could trust him with it. He turned it into the password for his vault.

For a second, nothing happened. Then, the red node on the screen flashed green.

*ACCESS GRANTED. ASSETS FROZEN.*

Someone behind me exhaled.

I logged into my own encrypted server next. The Serena Rossi Independent Trust was legal, clean, and separate from the Moretti name. The final transfer cleared.

I stood at the reinforced window. Across Manhattan, Riccardo would be at The Plaza Hotel with a glass of champagne in his hand, celebrating himself and his angel.

Enjoy your party, Riccardo.

Behind me, the Zurich node remained stamped *LOCKED*.