LOGIN"That's not true," she said quickly, trying to make her voice sound firm even though her chest felt as if it were being crushed. "Junior, listen to Mommy carefully. Grandma Margaret is lying. Mommy loves you very much, more than anything in this world.""But Grandma said—""You must not believe Grandma Margaret," Alina interrupted, forcing a calmness she did not feel at all. "Now Mommy wants you to do something important. Can you hide? Under the bed, in the closet, anywhere you can get into quietly?"A small sob could be heard, followed by a scraping sound as if someone was moving."I'm under the bed," Junior whispered, his voice barely audible. "But Mommy, I can hear those people's voices getting closer."Salvatore, who had been listening through the speakerphone, raised his hand and signaled to his team. Without making a sound, he wrote something on a piece of paper and showed it to Renee: Don't let him talk too much. They might hear his voice.Renee nodded, then whispered to Alina,
The interrogation room suddenly felt starved of air."Junior?" Alina's voice cracked. She stood so fast that her chair was shoved backward, screeching against the floor. "What do you mean, instructions involving Junior?"Vincent leaned back calmly, as if the panic in front of him were entertainment worth savoring. "Margaret isn't a woman who accepts defeat. If her plan here fails, there's always a second plan. And Margaret's second plan is always the same: take back what she considers hers.""Speak clearly!" Adrian snapped."I don't know the details," Vincent answered. "But Harris has an activation code. One message, and the people Margaret planted will move."Salvatore had already turned around. "Renee. Contact Junior's guard team. Now."Renee pressed the number with slightly trembling fingers and switched on the speaker. The ringtone sounded once, twice, three times.Alina squeezed the edge of the table until her knuckles turned white. Every ring felt like a thread being slowly pull
The words made Alina's heart stop for a moment."Who?" she pressed, her voice shaking between anger and a fear only just taking shape. "Who are you talking about?"Vincent savored the moment, letting the silence hang longer than necessary, drawing out every second to maximize the impact of the information he was about to reveal."Before I tell you," he said finally, "I want a written agreement. Full protection, a reduced sentence, and a safety guarantee for my family."Salvatore stepped forward, his voice cold and full of authority. "You're in no position to demand anything, Moretti. You've already been caught with enough evidence to put you away for life.""Maybe," Vincent answered calmly. "But the information I have could be worth more than my own sentence. You want to know who helped Margaret? You'll have to pay the price."Adrian looked at Vincent with a hatred he no longer bothered to hide. "You're still playing games even now.""It's what I've always done well," Vincent answered
The interrogation room felt cold even with the AC off, tension filling every corner.Alina sat across from Vincent, with Adrian beside her and two of Salvatore's team members standing watchfully by the door."What do you mean?" Alina asked, trying to keep her voice steady even as every instinct in her screamed to be careful.Vincent gave a thin smile, savoring the moment where he still held control despite his cuffed hands."You know about Steven Walsh's death," he said. "You know Daniel ordered it. But do you know the real reason Daniel became so obsessed with controlling every aspect of your life?""Because he's possessive," Alina answered, impatient with Vincent's word games. "Because he sees me as something he owns.""That's true, but it's not the whole story," Vincent continued. "I've been investigating the Blackwood family for years, long before you married Daniel. There's something about your marriage that even Daniel himself might not fully understand."Adrian leaned forward.
"What do you mean?" Adrian pressed, his voice tense with a bad feeling starting to take shape. "Who are you talking about?"Salvatore opened the folder he'd brought, setting several documents on the table with a careful motion."We found communication records," he said. "Between Vincent and someone using the code name 'Falcon.' It took time to decrypt the real identity, but our tech team managed to trace it.""And?" Alina asked, her heart pounding.Salvatore looked at them with an expression he rarely showed—something resembling hesitation over how to deliver a painful truth."Detective Reyes," he said finally.A suffocating silence filled the room."That's not possible," Adrian whispered, shaking his head in disbelief. "Reyes helped us through this entire case. He's the one who found the evidence against Daniel, who investigated Walsh's death—""I know this is hard to believe," Salvatore cut in, his voice softer. "But the evidence is fairly clear. Reyes has been receiving payments fr
That night crawled by slowly, every minute feeling like an hour to those waiting in tense anticipation.Salvatore's team had already spread out around the house suspected of being Vincent's hideout, watching from a safe distance with advanced equipment able to capture every movement undetected.In the command room, Alina sat in front of a screen displaying live feeds from various hidden cameras, her eyes never leaving any movement caught on camera."There's activity," one team member said, pointing to a corner of the screen. "Two people coming out of the house, looks like a security patrol."Salvatore watched closely, noting every detail—their patrol route, the time intervals, the blind spots that might be exploitable."Standard," he murmured. "They're following basic security protocol. That's good—it means they're not overly paranoid, which means their defenses might not be as strong as we think."Adrian, sitting beside Alina with his arm still bandaged from the previous night's inci







