The Black Diamond

Chapter 3 The Trojan Document

Code Black reached every account before dawn. I was in a motel room arranging my disappearance when Dante's men called. I gave them the room number.

The room smelled of bleach, and my wet gown hung over the shower rail. I had just copied the last access log to the burner phone. If Dante wanted me found, I preferred to choose the place.

They drove me to the boardroom at Moretti headquarters.

The family elders and Dante's *capos* filled both sides of the mahogany table. Their phones showed failed transfers and sealed port notices. Nobody offered me a chair.

These men had spent years congratulating Dante for solutions I delivered before breakfast. Now they watched my hands and kept their own away from their phones, afraid one wrong call would seal another account.

Someone had already taken the chair at the head.

Chloe sat in it with one hand over her stomach. Dante's most loyal guards stood behind her.

A capo cleared his throat. "Donna Chloe, the families are demanding payment. The ports are sealed and the accounts are frozen."

Dante came through the door, caught my arm, and pulled me to the table. His shirt collar was open and one sleeve had dried blood on it. He threw down a stack of papers.

"Sign."

The papers transferred every Aegis corporation asset, holding, and access key to Katerina Rostova. Chloe's legal name appeared on every page.

The legitimate front had taken me years to build. Its holdings could survive the scrutiny that would put every capo at this table in prison. Dante meant to give the whole structure to a woman he had known for months.

I looked at Chloe. "You burned my home and took my mother's ring. Now you want Aegis too?"

Dante slapped me. My cheek struck my teeth, and the room went quiet.

Blood touched my tongue. He had struck me before in training and once by accident during a raid. This was the first time he had done it seated before his own men.

He bent close. "Sign it, or I dig up your father. I'll grind his bones and flush them into the city sewer."

My father's grave had no guards. Dante knew where to find it.

He had stood beside me at that grave and promised to keep it safe. The threat worked because I knew he could reach the grounds before any order from my burner phone reached them.

I picked up the pen.

Dante's shoulders loosened. The elders leaned toward the papers. As usual, nobody read the charter clauses attached to the transfer.

Years earlier, I had put a dead man's switch into the Aegis charter. A forced transfer would place three hundred million dollars in laundered phantom debt under the recipient's name. It would also send the Bratva an encrypted record naming the new owner as the thief behind their last missing shipment.

The clauses were buried among routine succession terms and activated only under a forced transfer. Dante had approved the charter years ago without reading it.

I signed each marked page and slid the stack across the table.

Chloe hugged it to her chest. Then she glanced at the service tray.

The teapot had arrived minutes earlier. Steam still rose from its spout, and there was enough open space between Chloe and me for everyone at the table to see her move.

She tipped the teapot into her own lap and screamed.

"Aah! My stomach! She pushed it!" she screamed, clutching her belly and collapsing to the floor. "Siena did it! My baby!"

A dozen witnesses had watched her reach for the pot. Security cameras covered both ends of the room. Dante looked at neither.

He backhanded me out of the chair. My head hit the marble, and the ceiling lights doubled.

"You couldn't leave my child alone." He pointed at the guards. "Put her in the cistern. Let the water teach her."

Two guards hauled me up. Behind them, Chloe stood without help and wiped water from her dress. She smiled once Dante turned away.

No one asked to review the cameras. The elders returned to their locked accounts while Dante followed the guards toward the cistern.

The guards dragged me down the stone stairs and threw me through an iron door. The bolt slid home. Black water soaked my shoes, then climbed to my knees.

Under the water, I found the chain bolted to the wall and closed my hand around the link I had weakened in advance. The guards had never searched the cistern itself.

(Dante's POV)