Page 118 of Double Trouble for the Mafia Prince
"Is Rafa here?" I cut him off before he can call this pleasure.
He shakes his head, as I knew he would.
When my brother becomes busy, he tends to vanish for weeks at an end.
With a little nod, I step inside, and he leaves me to it.
The rooms we used to fill with strategy and ceremony now echo with absence.
But I have a faint idea where I need to go, and head straight for the study.
The desk is still there, heavy and old, the lock on the bottom drawer rusted but intact.
I pick it easily.
Rafa himself taught me how when I was twelve.
Inside: one rolled schematic of old trade routes, four spare bullets, a sealed envelope labeledUM-N4.
My hands tremble as I open it.
Three printed pages in faint Rossi syntax.
The formatting alone tells me enough.
I’ve seen it before; once, years ago.
My father called it contingency documentation.
The date on the files predates Luca’s rise.
My father’s name isn’t listed.
But it doesn't have to be.
His presence is all over the structure: the way he outlined dummy shipments, fallback shells, coded port handlers listed under made-up syndicates.
It’s a ghost-map of the infrastructurebeneaththe Rossi name.
Heart full of dread, I make my way to the north wing archives.
The doors open without sound.
The deeper I go, the colder it gets. It smells of mildew, rust, paper left too long in air that doesn’t move.
I pass crates stamped with the original crest.
Scrolls from smuggler registries.
Ledgers of bribes paid in currencies no country claims.
And then I find a folder tucked behind one of the legal drawers on the second row.
It readsOPERATION UMBER.
The ink is black.
No flourish.
