Page 69 of Angelo's Vengeance

Ahead — voices. Slavic.

I tapped Ilias on the shoulder, and we flanked. Four men. Complacent. Young, or maybe just stupid. Not mafia — no tattoos. Mercs. I hated mercenaries. They fought for paychecks, not blood. There was no soul behind that, and I couldn’t respect it.

Ilias’s silencer hissed. The rest flinched a little too late, jerking around to see their comrade fall. Ilias was a shadow — rifle butt to the throat, one clean break as I moved through the space like a blade. One shot to the chest. One to the head. No hesitation.

Thirty seconds. Four bodies.

“They’re not mafia,” Ilias said quietly, scanning the room. “Mercs. Same as before.”

“Carlotta doesn’t trust anyone she doesn’t buy.” I crouched, rifling through one of their vests. No insignia. No dog tags. “NATO gear. Black market. High-grade.”

“Too bad she can’t buy better quality mercs.” He gave a dark chuckle, looking over the pile of bodies.

“No shit,” I agreed.

We discovered the nerve center buried deep beneath the concrete, with lights flickering overhead in dull strobes, the kind that turned time syrupy and strange. Screens covered one wall, displaying ports, shipping manifests, customs data — not just from Romania, but also Dubai, Trieste, and Piraeus.

“She’s not just siphoning Ilias’s trade routes,” I said. “She’s building an empire.”

Veronica’s voice crackled through our comms. “These routes were activated three weeks ago. Coordinated across four continents. This was planned long before Barone.”

“Trace them,” I said. “Every route, everytransaction, every fake identity she’s tied to these ports.”

“I already started,” Veronica said. “But you won’t like it.”

“I don’t need to like it,” I whispered. “I need to end it.” This just solidified for me that while I’d been living my life away in New York, forgetting that my mother existed, she had been plotting, planning, and thriving. Not only that, but she had been doing so in the one industry that I had been trying to eradicate from the Santelli name — trafficking. She must have been laughing at me the entire time. I ground my teeth together. I’d been a fool for not seeing the bigger picture.

The basement reeked of damp concrete and burnt circuits. It was a surveillance hub cobbled together from stolen parts and black-market dreams. Cablescoiled like snakes.Screens flickered. There was a low hum that vibrated through my bones.

“Plug into port three,” Veronica’s voice crackled in my ear. “Top left. I’ve got you.”

I slotted the USB and waited.

She worked fast. “Encrypted drives, multiple archives—wait. I’m in.”

One screen lit up. Surveillance stills. There were ports, shipping lanes, and container yards.

Ilias stepped closer, tension rising. “She’s moving goods across borders and using my shipping lanes. That’s why she studied the Anthakos network. It was always about logistics. That’s why she was in New York. It had all been a little bit of a magic show. A diversion. She wanted us looking in one direction while she was focused here in Europe.”

“She’s been piggybacking on every legal channel you built. Not just goods,” Veronica said. “Weapons. Personnel. High-value transfers masked through dummy cargo.”

The truth shattered through me. Of course, she had. The old ways weren’t enough for her. She wanted something global. Untouchable. We had been thinking small. She’d just used us.

“Trace every line. Every transaction. Every hidden dock and shell company,” I said. “We unravel her like a thread. Let’s start buying our own mercs. I want a location. Next time we fly out. Let’s make it count. I have an idea. Let me percolate on it a little, “ I said, toeing a cable. It might be insane, but if we want to catch her in person, then maybe we need to be a little crazy. Ilias might not like it much, but it might be the only way.

CHAPTER 39

ANGELO

The adrenalinethat had driven me for the last forty-eight hours had curdled into something colder. Something precise. Carlotta wasn’t just a ghost anymore. She was anoperator—a strategist. And we’d been reacting while she orchestrated from the shadows. That was endingnow. We needed to change our game.

I stood at the head of the table — cheap plywood warped from humidity. A map of the Black Sea was spread open like a wound. Our knives were stabbed into ports and cities like sutures, trying to keep the thing from splitting further.

“She wants Ilias,” I said flatly. “Specifically,his shipping routes. She’s been circling them like a shark for months.”

Ilias sat back, arms crossed, expression unreadable. He hadn’t spoken much since the surveillance room discovery, but I knew the look on his face. I’d worn it before, the flat look that said everything was fine while his eyes were banked with hate.

Conall leaned forward. “You want to give her the Anathakos shipping network?”

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