Kill Order Kiss Novel Chapter 12

Kill Order Kiss Novel Chapter 12

The task force worked for six months, building a case that grew more complex by the week. I kept my history with Dante compartmentalized, locked in a vault I never opened during work hours. To my colleagues, I was simply the best forensic analyst they’d ever worked with-meticulous, tireless, emotionally detached.

At night, alone in my apartment, the vault cracked open.

I’d lie awake tracing the financial networks on my ceiling, seeing Dante’s name at every junction, remembering the man who used to trace patterns on my skin with the same fingers that signed criminal orders. The cognitive dissonance was staggering-how do you hunt someone you once loved?

You do it by remembering why you stopped.

Rome, now estranged from the family and working as a paramedic in Boston, called me one evening.

“I heard through channels that there’s a federal investigation. Is it yours?”

“I can’t confirm or deny-”

“Val. It’s me.”

I sighed. “Yes.”

“Are you okay?”

“I’m doing my job.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

I pressed my fingers against my eyelids. “I’m fine, Rome. Really. This isn’t personal anymore.”

“Everything with Dante is personal. That’s his superpower-making everything feel like it’s about him.”

He was right, and I hated that he was right.

“Just be careful,” he said. “Not of Dante-he’d never hurt you, whatever else he is. But the people around him now aren’t the ones you knew. After Castellano fell, he brought in outsiders. Dangerous ones.”

“I know. I’ve read their files.”

“Reading a file and facing a gun are different things, Val.”

“I know that too.”
Spring arrived, and with it, the final phase of the investigation. Agent Torres called the team together for a briefing that would determine the operation’s endgame.

“We have enough for indictments on the financial charges,” he said. “But the AG wants more. There’s evidence of weapons trafficking through the new Moretti channels-if we can connect the money to the arms, we’ve got them on RICO charges. That’s decades, not years.”

He looked directly at me. “Serrano, your analysis of the shell company network suggests there’s a centra ledger-a master financial record that ties everything together. We need it.”

“It exists,” I confirmed. “Based on the transaction patterns, it’s maintained digitally but backed up physically.

Probably kept at the primary residence.”

“The compound,” Torres said.

“Yes.”

The room was quiet. Everyone understood what that meant. Getting evidence from inside a fortified mob

compound wasn’t a desk job.

Torres leaned forward. “We’re arranging a cooperating witness. Someone inside who can access the compound and retrieve or photograph the ledger.”

“Who?” I asked, though something in my gut already knew.

“We received a contact three days ago. Someone offering to cooperate in exchange for immunity. Claims to

have full access to Moretti’s private records.”

He slid a photo across the table.

Marco Vitelli.