“Julius and Rose are currently inside waiting for Morgan to agree to meet with them. They are playing the perfect visitor.”
“Then we wait.”
My heart is thumping as I wait for the chess pieces to be in position because rushing in would only jeopardize the plan.
Tiffany glances around her and whispers fearfully, “I can’t see any of the staff. Surely if they are dining together, they would be busy in the kitchen.”
She makes a valid point.Where are the staff?
The guard hears her question and murmurs into his headset, and as the minutes tick by, we wait for an answer.
He turns to me and, as always, his expression remains impassive as he whispers, “They ordered takeout. Apparently, there are no domestic staff signed in today.”
“That’s odd.”
Tiffany appears confused. “There is always a housekeeper and two more staff, even when the house is empty.”
I’m uneasy about this. Demitri is here, Morgan is here, and their guards are here, so why are there no staff?
I sense a trap, and my first thought is to get Tiffany the hell away from here. She grips my hand tightly and whispers, “Perhaps we should listen in on their conversation. It may help.”
“Listen in?”
She grins. “My father trusted nobody. He had good cause not to, and set up spyware in all his homes. The device was connected to his phone via software, and if his computer is still in his den, I know the password.”
“Where is his den?”
“It’s on the same level as the dining room, accessed via a different staircase. Perhaps if we leave Rose and Julius to pay them a visit, we can listen in and make our plans based on how that goes.”
Pride blooms in my chest for my wife because she is quick thinking and unafraid, and I appreciate those qualities in her—a lot. It also strikes me that it’s a good job Enrico is dead already because if he heard everything that went on in his homes, he must have turned a blind eye to Morgan’s cruel treatment of the girls.
“Lead the way.”
She nods, a mischievous grin replacing the worried frown, and as we follow her silently through her former home, I wonder how this will end.
The house appears deserted,and as we creep through it, my guard with the headset liaises with the one in the camera room, and we avoid any patrolling guards. There are two, the rest remaining outside and it appears that Morgan is not expecting trouble, which suits our purpose perfectly.
We reach Enrico’s den, and Tiffany wastes no time settling behind his desk. Her fingers fly over the keyboard, and soon we hear Morgan’s shrill voice as if she is in the same room with us.
“It’s a fucking trap, I tell you.”
“So it would seem.”
Raphael’s tone is measured, calm even, the opposite to Morgan’s.
“How many guards do we have?”
“Not enough if you’re right.”
“Fuck, why did we not prepare for this?”
“Turn them away. They can’t do anything; this place is a fortress.”
“I need to think.”
Morgan sounds frightened, and she should be and huffs, “I’ll call the Monza mafia. They are our nearest allies.”
“It will take them one hour to get here, and that’s only if they are happy to start a war with Giovanni Ravera.”