SERENA POV
Three days had passed since Valentina Marini walked out of that neutral northern district restaurant and pulled down her sixty-two million dollar cage. Three days of brutal, continuous data reconstruction. The Castello operation was finally stable. The new corporate structure was rebuilt, fortified behind fifteen separate automated disclosure walls that I had personally engineered to ensure an ambush like hers could never happen again.
Now came the real wreckage.
We took off from the private tarmac at dawn. The cabin of the Gulfstream was vast, clean, and silent, the twin engines a low, muted roar against the glass as we climbed through the clouds toward northern Italy.
I sat with my laptop closed on my lap, my fingers tracing the cold leather of the armrest. Adriano sat acr
