Chapter 14
Back in Tuscany, the sprawling estate felt entirely different without Julian’s imposing presence. The golden sunlight still bathed the rolling hills, but to Elena, the shadows inside the grand house felt noticeably longer and colder. She sat in the nursery, gently rocking Isabella in her arms, listening to the rhythmic, soothing sound of the baby’s breathing.
But her own heart was racing with anxiety.
Julian had left three days ago, and his calls had been brief, cryptic, and laced with a heavy, dangerous tension. Elena knew him well enough to recognize the tone of a man preparing for a brutal war.
She carefully placed the sleeping infant into her ornate crib and walked out into the massive, marble-floored hallway. The estate was heavily guarded; she could see the dark silhouettes of Julian’s private security team patrolling the perimeter of the vineyards. But a nagging, persistent intuition told her that walls and guards were never truly enough. Camila had taught her that the most dangerous threats always came from within.
Elena walked into Julian’s private study, locking the heavy oak doors behind her. She sat at his massive desk and opened his encrypted laptop. Julian had given her the master passwords months ago, a symbol of his absolute trust.
She opened the security logs, pulling up the digital blueprints of the estate’s surveillance network. She wasn't a trained operative, but she was a mother, and a mother’s protective instinct was a formidable force.
As she scrolled through the firewall access logs from the past forty-eight hours, her eyes caught something anomalous.
"What is that?" Elena murmured to herself.
At exactly 2:00 AM the previous night, there had been a tiny, almost imperceptible data ping on the estate's localized Wi-Fi network. It wasn't an external hack; the firewall had easily deflected those. This ping originated from inside the house.
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Someone inside the estate’s fortified walls had briefly turned on an unauthorized cellular device, transmitting a tiny burst of data before shutting it down.
Elena felt a cold chill run down her spine. The enemy wasn't just in New York. The enemy was already inside her home.
