Chapter 15
Elena did not panic. The old Elena, the one who had been manipulated and gaslit by Victor and Camila, might have crumbled under the terrifying realization that her sanctuary was compromised. But the woman sitting in the study now had survived the fire, and she had emerged as forged steel.
She quietly closed the laptop, ensuring everything looked exactly as she had found it. She needed to identify the mole without alerting them that they had been discovered.
She picked up her secure phone and dialed Marcus’s direct line in New York.
"Mrs. Rossi," Marcus answered immediately, the background noise of the New York war room buzzing behind him. "Is everything alright?"
"I need you to listen to me very carefully, Marcus," Elena said, her voice eerily calm and commanding. "Do not tell Julian about this call yet. He needs to remain entirely focused on Lorenzo Costa. But we have a mole inside the Tuscan estate."
There was a sharp intake of breath on the other end of the line. "Are you absolutely certain? My men are vetted thoroughly."
"It’s not one of your perimeter guards," Elena explained, keeping her voice low. "The data ping came from the internal household network. It has to be part of the domestic staff. The chefs, the maids, or the groundskeepers."
"I am dispatching a tactical extraction team to your location right now," Marcus said, his professional tone masking his deep alarm. "We will pull you and Isabella out to a safe house."
"No," Elena countered firmly. "If I run, the mole will know they've been made, and they will alert Lorenzo. We need to use this to our advantage. We need to feed them false information."
"Elena, it is too dangerous," Marcus argued. "Julian will kill me if anything happens to you."
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"Julian isn't here," Elena replied, her eyes narrowing with fierce determination. "I am the lady of this house, Marcus. And I am going to protect my daughter. Trace the internal IP address. Find out exactly which room that signal came from. I will handle the rest."
She hung up the phone, her heart pounding a steady, relentless rhythm of war.
