PART 11 – The Shadow in Zurich
The message on the screen burned like fire in my eyes. Headquarters. Until now, we thought the Moretti family was a local, powerful network in Italy, but the reference to Zurich changed everything. "What does this mean, Dad?" I asked, tightly holding his hand. "So there's someone even higher in the hierarchy?" My father's face turned gloomier than I had ever seen it.
He looked at Inspector Rossi. "The Moretti family was merely the executing body in Italy, Rossi. But the financing – the real money behind all those false identities and money laundering operations – came from an international holding in Zurich. If they now know I'm still alive and that Emma and I have this evidence, they won't rest until everything and everyone is wiped out." Inspector Rossi nodded gravely.
"We must act immediately. We'll take you to a federal police safe house. This dossier is going straight to Interpol today." Two hours later, we were sitting in a tinted police van heading toward a secure facility outside Milan. Elena had since been picked up by her parents, not before we hugged tightly and promised to call each other soon. As the car sped down the highway, I looked outside.
The world seemed so normal. People drove their cars, drank coffee at gas stations, and listened to the radio, unaware of the massive storm raging behind the scenes. In my hand, I held the USB flash drive I had hidden earlier in my bag before Lorenzo broke into our apartment. During the chaos in the chapel, I had let it slip into my inner pocket, and Lorenzo had only taken the empty folders.
I closed my eyes and plugged the drive into my small card reader, which I had in my bag. I opened the encrypted file on my laptop. Among hundreds of documents, one file caught my eye with a date from last night. Not created by Lorenzo, but automatically synchronized with a cloud server in Zurich. I clicked the file open. It wasn't a document, but a list of names.
A list of high-ranking politicians, bankers, and... the name of the director of the store where I worked, Elena’s boss, and even the city's mayor. And beneath it stood one specific notice: “Transaction with card number MB-025 has permanently failed. Activation of Protocol Omega has started.” My breath caught. I didn't know what Protocol Omega entailed, but the next sentence on the screen made my blood run cold in my veins. “Target located in transit. Elimination follows within 10 minutes.” I looked at the dashboard of the police car. The driver suddenly took an exit that wasn't on the route to the secure facility.
