Page 155 of Double Trouble for the Mafia Prince
26
DANTE
Iduck beneath the broken roll-up door of the warehouse in Nuova Speranza’s western shipping block and follow the noise of voices through a row of stacked crates.
Two of our men are inside already, standing over a desk littered with outdated routing slips, three burner phones without SIM cards, and a ledger coded in shorthand only old Rossi-trained runners would still recognize.
It is the third location in as many hours, each one leading to the next like a scavenger hunt designed to keep me just behind the truth.
Nico turns when I enter.
His hands are clean and he looks disgruntled.
"Nothing here but bones," he says. "Whoever cleaned this place out knew we were coming."
I study the wall beyond the desk.
There's a faint print of something where a document used to hang, a square lighter than the surrounding grime.
A small nail protrudes from the center. I move closer.
There are faint numbers scratched into the wood beneath it, too rough to be from a pen.
I lean down.
They look like a date and an access code.
Underneath, the last three letters are clearer than the rest:UMB.
I step back as the implication lands on me and makes my head swim.
My hands curl before I can stop them.
I turn toward Nico.
"This was one of the fallback sites from Operation Umber. Old Rossi trade safehouses.
They used to cycle documents through dead drop courier channels. There were only six."
"How the hell do you know that?"
"Because I’ve seen the files. And because I’ve been sleeping in the same house as the woman whose family wrote the blueprint."
Tomas brings over a black book they found tucked in the floorboards.
No title.
No binding.
Just stapled parchment sealed in plastic wrap.
The first page bears a list of names.
The second, a crude map of trade hubs and false relay points marked across the southern coast.
One of them is circled twice.
Naples, dock sixteen.
