Chapter 13
At dawn, the Bellacorte family’s sleek black private jet roared off the runway of a private Denver airfield, tearing through the heavy gray clouds to cross the Atlantic.
Richard sat in the luxurious, leather-upholstered VIP cabin, enveloped in a heavy, contemplative silence. It was the terrifying stillness of a volcano moments before a catastrophic eruption. He had safely relocated Sarah and Noah to a highly classified, subterranean bunker in the Nevada desert, guarded by a private army of his most elite mercenaries. Now, Richard was traveling to Europe to personally annihilate the phantom haunting his bloodline.
Frank entered the cabin, placing an encrypted military tablet on the mahogany desk in front of Richard.
"Boss, our cyber division managed to decrypt a fragment of data from the comms device we pulled off the dead assassin," Frank reported, his face tense. "Dominic’s bank account in Zurich wasn't activated by a standard numerical passcode. It was unlocked by a biometric protocol."
Richard frowned deeply. "Biometrics? Dominic died four years ago. How could anyone use a dead man's retina or fingerprint to access an account?"
"That is exactly the problem, Boss," Frank hesitated, choosing his words carefully. "The Swiss banking system requires live telemetry. A live pulse, flowing blood. Someone out there is using a living DNA match belonging to Dominic."
"Ridiculous!" Richard slammed his heavy hand onto the desk. "I signed my own son's death certificate! I saw his remains in that Chicago morgue with my own eyes!"
"But do you remember... the body was burned beyond all recognition in that car fire before you arrived?" Frank lowered his voice, touching upon a horrific detail Richard had willfully buried for years. "Mark was the first to arrive on the scene. Mark was the one who provided the dental records to the corrupt federal examiners to confirm the identity."
A freezing jolt of electricity ran down Richard’s spine. Mark. His greedy, cowardly, and vicious eldest son. The man who had starved a child and tried to murder Sarah for a timber fortune. If Mark had staged the car bombing to eliminate Dominic from the line of succession... then whose burned corpse was in that morgue? And where was Dominic?
"Where are we landing, Frank?" Richard asked, his voice dropping into its most lethal, unforgiving register.
"Geneva, Switzerland, Boss. The headquarters of the bank holding the offshore account," Frank answered. "But our European intelligence network just flagged a major anomaly. A notorious, highly militarized syndicate known as 'The Iron Collar' controls the entire Alpine region along Latitude 47. Their leader is an American ghost who never removes a silver mask... hiding a face supposedly covered in horrific burn scars."
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Richard’s hand instinctively tightened around his signet ring. A severely burned man. A European shadow army. An account unlocked by Bellacorte blood.
The true war wasn't in the snowy mountains of Colorado. It was waiting for him across the world.
