Smoke And Surveillance
665 Words
Rain washed over the streets of Palermo like the city itself was trying to cleanse its sins. Alessia sat in the backseat of a bulletproof sedan, fingers tapping rhythmically against her thigh as her driver navigated through the shadowed side roads of the industrial district.
She had spent the past forty-eight hours dissecting every detail from the masquerade at Villa Salvatore, trying to separate illusion from truth. The whisper that Rafael was alive haunted her. It hadn’t been a bluff—Lorenzo’s smirk carried too much certainty, too much sadistic pleasure.
If her brother had survived, it meant two things: Lorenzo had plans for him, and those plans were crueler than death.
Her phone vibrated once. A secure message from her hacker contact in Marseille.
"Surveillance servers cracked. Sending package. Codeword: GHOSTWALKER."
The corners of Alessia’s lips twitched faintly. Finally, something concrete.
She plugged the encrypted drive into her tablet as the car slowed to a crawl near an abandoned warehouse. Live satellite feeds, camera hacks, and intercepted communication logs flooded the screen. Hundreds of data strings—all tagged with a singular signature: Project Requiem.
Her blood ran cold.
That name had once appeared in one of her father’s secret archives—a classified Salvatore operation rumored to involve psychological reprogramming and behavioral conditioning. Experimental warfare… hidden under the guise of peace negotiations.
And now, Rafael’s name was attached to it.
She tapped into a restricted camera feed labeled: Sector 6 – Holding Level. The screen flickered, then stabilized.
A man sat in a sterile room—gray walls, single lightbulb, no windows. His wrists were cuffed to the table. He looked thinner, beard unkempt, expression blank. But the moment he turned his head slightly toward the camera, her heart seized in her chest.
Rafael.
Alive. Changed. But unmistakably her brother.
She froze. His eyes—once warm and quick with wit—now stared forward like they belonged to someone else.
What had they done to him?
A soft chime interrupted her thoughts. The driver glanced in the rearview mirror.
“Ma’am, we’ve got company. Black SUV tailing us since the last turn.”
Alessia snapped the tablet shut and tucked it under her coat.
“Evasive route Gamma. Now.”
The driver obeyed, swinging the car sharply into a side alley, tires hissing on wet pavement. Through the back window, headlights followed—persistent, hunting.
Alessia opened a compartment in the seat beside her and pulled out a compact submachine gun. She loaded it without hesitation.
“I want one alive.”
The car swerved again, this time into a dead-end yard behind an old cannery. As the SUV blocked them in, two masked figures jumped out, weapons raised.
Alessia kicked open her door and moved like fire—fluid, precise. She dropped the first attacker with a shot to the thigh, disarming him before he hit the ground. The second came at her fast, but she ducked low, swept his legs, and drove her elbow into his chest until he collapsed.
The skirmish ended in under thirty seconds.
She knelt beside the first man, yanking his mask off. A young face. No tattoos. No gang marks. Just fear.
“Who sent you?” she asked coldly.
He hesitated. “We were just paid to follow… not engage. I swear.”
“Paid by who?”
“I—I don’t know! The drop was anonymous—Bitcoin, blind server. We only had coordinates. Nothing else.”
Alessia stood slowly, anger coiling through her like a serpent.
Lorenzo was watching her. Testing her. Letting her see just enough to keep hope alive.
She turned to her driver. “Dump them somewhere quiet. And burn the SUV.”
Then she climbed back into her seat and stared out the window.
She had seen Rafael. That was real.
And now, she had a new mission.
She wasn’t just going to bring her brother back.
She was going to burn Project Requiem to the ground.
- Writer
