Chapter four
1184 Words
Ariella didn’t sleep that night.
The cold message on her phone—“Stop digging or you’ll end up like him.”—replayed in her head like a broken record. Her hands had shaken as she backed up her files to an encrypted drive, locked the printed documents in her suitcase, and slid the photo of her father deeper into her wallet.
Who had sent it?
And more importantly—how did they know?
The next morning, she sat on the Tube, eyes darting to every face. A man in a long coat. A woman with mirrored sunglasses. A teenager scrolling through his phone. Every one of them looked innocent. But one of them might have hacked her, threatened her, watched her.
The city didn’t care. London hummed around her—businessmen tapping phones, tourists fumbling with maps, cars rushing over puddles left by the night’s rain.
She arrived at the office early again, hoping the silence would help her focus. But as soon as she stepped through security, she knew something was off.
Her desk had been moved.
The monitor and keyboard were gone, the drawers emptied. Even the plant she’d brought from home was gone.
Ariella stood there, stunned.
“Miss Grey?” The HR manager, a woman named Helen, approached with a forced smile. “Your station has been reassigned. You’ll now be working from the 17th floor.”
“The intern floor?” Ariella asked sharply.
“Yes,” Helen replied. “Effective immediately.”
She didn’t protest. There was no point. This wasn’t random. Someone wanted her isolated.
The 17th floor was a different world. No glass offices, no catered espresso machines. Just rows of cheap desks, interns in wrinkled shirts, and the constant buzz of nervous ambition. She found her new seat wedged between two law students typing so fast their keyboards sounded like rainfall.
Ariella sat, opened her laptop, and tried not to show anything on her face.
Ten minutes later, she received an internal message.
From: D. Moretti
Subject: 7:30 PM. Warehouse 14.
No attachments. No explanation.
Her stomach tightened.
Warehouse 14.
It was part of Moretti Group’s private logistics division — not far from the docks. The location was off-book, barely listed on company maps. She had only come across it while digging through restricted files.
Now Dante was summoning her there?
At night?
She knew better than to reply. She closed the message, finished her work, and told no one.
The warehouse was cold and quiet when she arrived. She walked past the fenced perimeter, ducked under the broken panel someone had pointed out on a forum, and made her way to the back entrance.
It was unlocked.
Inside, crates were stacked in uneven towers. Dust danced in the beams of light that spilled from hanging bulbs. Ariella stepped cautiously, her heels echoing on the concrete.
“Miss Grey,” came Dante’s voice from the shadows.
He was leaning against a steel beam, hands in his coat pockets, dressed all in black. Behind him, two men in dark suits stood silently.
“You brought bodyguards?” she asked, arms crossed.
“They’re not for me,” he said. “They’re for you.”
She blinked. “Me?”
Dante stepped forward. “There’s been chatter. Someone flagged your name to the Luciano family last night.”
Her blood ran cold.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Yes, you do,” he said. “You’ve been digging in places you shouldn’t.”
“I’m doing what you asked—”
“No,” he interrupted. “You’re doing more.”
Ariella took a step back. “Are you threatening me?”
His jaw tightened. “I’m protecting you.”
“From what?”
“From people who won’t threaten you by text message,” he said. “They won’t warn you twice.”
Her breath hitched. “You think they’ll—”
“I don’t think,” he said, voice hard. “I know.”
Silence stretched between them, broken only by the soft hum of lights.
“Why are you helping me?” she asked finally.
He didn’t answer right away. Then: “Because someone helped me once. And I didn’t listen. They died for it.”
That admission felt like a c***k in the mask he always wore.
Ariella looked at him differently now. “What happened?”
“I was twenty,” he said. “My father was alive. The Lucianos wanted a deal. My uncle said it was suicide. I sided with my father. Two weeks later, my uncle’s car exploded in Camden.” His eyes flicked to hers. “They called it a gas leak.”
Her mouth went dry. “You think they’d do the same to me?”
“I think they’ve already decided what you’re worth.”
“And what’s that?”
Dante stepped closer. “A pawn. Or a liability.”
She should’ve been afraid. She should’ve run. But instead, Ariella stood taller.
“Then let me be something else.”
His gaze narrowed. “Like what?”
“An asset,” she said. “You want me to find the truth. Let me go deeper. Not just numbers. People. I’ll get the names. The deals. The dates.”
“That’s dangerous.”
“So is pretending everything’s fine.”
His lips twitched, just slightly. “You sound like your father.”
The words struck her like a blow.
“You knew him,” she said quietly.
Dante looked away.
“Didn’t you?”
“I knew the man he used to be,” he said. “Before he tried to walk away.”
Ariella’s heart pounded. “Then tell me what happened.”
He looked at her again. His voice dropped.
“Not yet.”
Later that night, Ariella returned to her flat, locked the door, and began her own version of war.
She pulled out a second laptop — one no one at Moretti could trace — and opened a private intelligence program she’d once used in university. She fed it the names from the Sicuro files, the Luciano deal, the old audit trails. She connected it with public records, offshore databases, and deep web search engines.
Lines began to form.
A timeline.
2012 — Harold Grey signs off on the Luciano shipping expansion.
2013 — GreyTech Holdings secures a private contract with Moretti Group.
2014 — Harold Grey resigns.
2015 — Audit reports suppressed.
2016 — Harold Grey dies. Official cause: suicide.
2017 — Dante Moretti becomes CEO.
2020 — Luciano Holdings reappears under a shell company in Dublin.
It was a web of names and dates and debts — and she was in the center of it.
Ariella closed the program and stood in the silence of her flat. Outside, London shimmered with lights and lies.
She wasn’t ready to confront Dante again.
Not yet.
But she knew one thing now.
Her father hadn’t died because he was guilty.
He had died because he had known too much.
And someone had made sure he never told anyone.
- Writer
