Chapter 14 - The Queen's Gambit
The silence in the boardroom was suffocating. Dominic stared at the live feed of his mother, the color completely draining from his face. The unbreakable billionaire, the man who had torn down dynasties to protect me, was entirely paralyzed by the threat to the woman who gave him life. Alessandro had perfectly engineered a checkmate.
"You have five minutes to contact your legal team," Alessandro said, checking a vintage Patek Philippe watch. "If the transfer isn't initiated, the feed goes dark."
Dominic reached for his phone with a shaking hand, his eyes filled with absolute defeat. He was going to surrender. He was going to hand over a global empire to a psychopath to save Carmela.
But I wasn't going to let that happen. I had scrubbed the floors of that estate. I knew every blind spot, every hidden passage, and every security flaw. More importantly, I knew the people who ran it.
"Dominic, wait," I said softly, placing my hand over his. I looked directly at Alessandro, my mind racing at a million miles an hour. "Alessandro, you've been in a Swiss asylum for a decade. You think you understand this company, but you only understand the money. You don't know the house."
"And you do, little maid?" Alessandro mocked.
"I know that the estate's garden cameras run on a closed-circuit loop that is heavily encrypted," I said, taking a step toward the table. "And I know that Elias’s second-in-command, a man named Marcus, is allergic to the white lilies that bloom around Carmela’s painting pavilion."
Alessandro’s smug expression faltered for a fraction of a second.
I looked closely at the smartphone screen. The mercenary holding the gun was wearing a tactical mask, but his sleeves were rolled up. His arms were completely clear. "The real Marcus has a massive, burn-scar tattoo of an eagle on his left forearm. He got it in Fallujah," I stated, my voice rising with authority.
I grabbed the phone off the table and threw it against the marble wall. It shattered into a hundred pieces, cutting the live feed instantly.
"What the hell did you just do?!" Dominic roared, absolute panic seizing him.
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"It’s a deepfake, Dominic!" I shouted back, turning to face him. "The video is a composite loop. The Vances used AI voice software to fake your signature, and Alessandro is using AI video rendering to fake a hostage situation! Carmela is safe inside the panic room. I ordered Elias to initiate the alpha-lockdown protocol the second we found Alessandro's file in the server room. No one is in those gardens."
Alessandro’s face twisted into a mask of pure, demonic rage. The aristocratic facade shattered entirely. He lunged across the table, drawing a sleek, ceramic blade from his cane, aiming directly for my throat.
