The Terminal Tumor

Chapter 4 The Burnt Basement

We forced our way into Victor Petrov’s warehouse. I led with my gun drawn and the oncology report folded in my pocket. *This is a lie. This is a lie.*

The basement door had burned down to black splinters in the concrete frame. My men kicked through it. Trapped heat rolled up the stairs with the smell of burnt plastic and chemicals.

I went down first, using my flashlight through the haze. The walls were black, the ceiling sagged, and ash covered the floor. I found no marks from a struggle and nothing that looked recoverable.

My boot struck something. I lowered the light.

An orange plastic bottle had melted into the floor. Part of its label remained legible: the name of an experimental drug used only for the most aggressive forms of brain cancer.

I crouched over it and checked the label again. It still had to be a lie.

My phone rang. Marco.

“Dante, the Swiss accounts are gone. Drained. The access codes for the medical supply lines have been changed. Nothing works.”

Before I could answer, Luca's phone rang. My head of security listened for a few seconds, then lowered it.

“Don, the network is dark. The safe houses, transport logs, the entire server. It's wiped. We can't reach any of it.”

I looked around at the men checking dead phones. Sienna had dismantled every system I claimed to own.

My phone rang again from an unknown number. “What?”

“Dante?” Dr. Alessi, our family physician, sounded out of breath. “The Elders from the shootout last week, Uncle Carlo and Leo, needed emergency surgery. We couldn't open Sienna's protocol. We needed the O-negative synthesis and the anti-venom she designed. They bled out on my table.”

The phone dropped into the ash.

My pills, the encrypted financial reports, the emergency procedures: Sienna had handled all of them while I took the credit.

My wife had built the Moretti defenses and kept the family alive.

I had traded her for Elena.

A phone chimed behind me.

Then another did.

Within seconds, every phone in the basement was chiming. Even the newest soldiers received the same notification.

Every screen showed a new email.

Sender: S. Moretti.

Subject: Voice Notes_99.

My thumb missed the passcode once. The email held no text, only one audio file.

I pressed play.

Sienna's voice came through the speaker.

She used the same measured tone she used when dictating a patient’s chart.

“Voice note one,” she said. “Date: October twelfth. Subject: Betrayal.”