Chapter Thirty-One
Taddeo
Taddeo left Isolde’s bedroom because staying after she told him that he and Corwin loved her most when they were deciding what happened to her would have turned silence into another form of pressure.
He closed the door carefully behind himself and stood in the corridor long enough to hear movement from the other side—the muted slide of a drawer, the faint rasp of the suitcase zipper, ordinary sounds made unbearable by the knowledge that she was packing because tomorrow might end with her leaving Northglass permanently.
Less than an hour earlier, some part of him had still been constructing arguments around why she should remain afterward if anything went wrong at Terminal Fourteen.
The danger would not necessarily end with Lelio.
The Serevin connection remained unresolved, Silas Venn continued appearing around the financial architecture without ever standing clearly inside it, and whoever helped build the larger scheme might survive even if Lelio did not.
Northglass would still be secure, familiar, staffed by people Isolde knew, and easier to defend than Mercer Street or her museum.
Every point was true, which was precisely why Taddeo no longer trusted himself to use any of them.
He went downstairs because security still offered problems with answers that did not depend on whether he was frightened of losing her.
The operations room at Northglass had become the center of the Terminal Fourteen exchange because Taddeo no longer trusted Bellandi systems enough to plan entirely through Bellandi House.
Marco occupied the main console beneath three illuminated monitors, one displaying Crownport’s western harbor and the others split between personnel assignments and vehicle routes, while Nico worked at the secondary station with a half-disassembled commercial radio unit beside his keyboard.
Luca stood over the center table marking a printed route packet with a pen, and two open equipment cases had been pushed beneath the wall, filled with batteries, medical kits, spare communications equipment, and enough analog copies of every important plan to make it clear Marco expected technology to become unreliable at the exact moment they needed it most.
Marco glanced up when Taddeo entered and watched him for half a second longer than necessary. “You somehow look worse than you did two hours ago. Corwin confirmed the final site while you were upstairs.”
Taddeo pulled out the chair beside him and ignored the first observation. “Which one did he choose?”
“Terminal Fourteen.” Marco enlarged the terminal map until the abandoned freight site filled the primary monitor, then traced the rough boundary with the cursor.
“Old container-transfer yard, two warehouse structures, western and eastern service approaches, rail access on the north side, open water along the southeast, and enough dead infrastructure to hide a small army if somebody arrived early.”
“It is a terrible site, which explains why Corwin likes it.” Taddeo leaned closer and followed the western service road inward with one finger, seeing immediately why Isolde’s brother had selected it.
“He gets more than one abort route, no approach completely controlled by us, and enough legitimate freight traffic farther west that he can disappear into ordinary movement if he thinks we’re betraying the agreement. ”
Luca opened his packet to the arrival diagram. “He requested fifty yards around his vehicle when he enters. No Bellandi car, no armed man approaching the lane until he reaches the exchange line.”
“He gets thirty.” Taddeo moved the armored sedan behind the heavy concrete loading wall west of the apron and studied the sight line before nodding. “He won’t see it from his approach, and if something fails before he reaches us, thirty yards is already farther than I want Isolde from hard cover.”
Marco entered the adjustment without commentary, and for nearly an hour the work became exactly what Taddeo needed it to be.
They reviewed routes, medical access, vehicle staging, communications failures, Corwin’s verification procedure for the eight-point-four-million-dollar transfer, and how long Cesare’s accountants would require to confirm control of the money before anyone moved.
Taddeo did not permit himself to think about the suitcase upstairs or the woman packing it.
Terminal Fourteen could become an ambush, and the fact that his personal life had finally reached a point at which the word love felt more dangerous than gunfire did not exempt him from making sure everyone survived long enough for that problem to matter.
Shortly after midnight, Marco found the first discrepancy.
It looked so ordinary on paper that another man might have dismissed it as administrative cleanup. Taddeo was comparing the personnel sheet approved earlier at Bellandi House with the final roster when one name broke the pattern he remembered.
“Why is DeSantis gone from south vehicle control?” Taddeo laid the two pages beside each other and tapped the replacement. “You had him there this afternoon. This version has Ruggiero.”
Marco frowned and turned toward his computer. “My working copy still has DeSantis. I didn’t change him.”
The room shifted without anyone needing an order. Luca stopped writing and moved closer, Nico abandoned the radio unit and opened the mirrored security logs, while Marco pulled the scheduling history onto another screen.
A second substitution appeared at the eastern service gate.
Then a third at the utility entrance.
Marco swore quietly when he found the fourth. “Communications changed too. Russo replaced Bellini at the secondary station at ten forty-six, and none of these came through our security account.”
Taddeo put both hands flat against the table and looked at the pattern rather than the individual names.
Four altered assignments could mean four bought men, but that was almost too obvious.
One compromised position buried among three legitimate substitutions would be cleaner and considerably harder to detect.
“Who authorized them?”
“Harbor logistics scheduling.” Marco enlarged the record. “Valenti’s manager token. Valid digital signature.”
“Valenti went home at seven.”
“Unless he developed a sudden passion for unpaid overtime.”
“Call him.”
Valenti answered after several rings sounding like a man dragged out of deep sleep, and any irritation disappeared when Marco asked whether he had touched the Terminal Fourteen roster.
He denied it immediately, then became completely awake when Marco told him his credentials had authorized four personnel changes hours after he left.
Taddeo listened until Valenti started describing where he had stored his work laptop. “Stay home. Do not call anyone in logistics, do not contact anyone who was working tonight, and do not log into a Bellandi system from anything you own until Marco clears you.”
There was a pause before Valenti answered. “Am I in trouble? Because I swear to God, Taddeo, I didn’t touch that roster.”
“You’re not in trouble unless you ignore what I just told you.” Taddeo waited until the man agreed before ending the call, then looked toward Marco. “Trace where the token was issued, not only where the changes were submitted.”
Marco’s hands moved quickly over the keyboard while Nico pulled a separate copy of the system logs onto an isolated machine. The answer emerged slowly enough to be worse than a simple stolen password.
“The session came through an internal relay, so the scheduling system treated it as trusted.” Marco expanded a permissions tree across two monitors. “The token itself was valid. Somebody either recovered a cached credential or used an internal machine capable of impersonating harbor coordination.”
“Which relay?”
Marco looked at him before enlarging the relevant branch. “Western development and freight operations inherited access because of the old municipal harbor projects.”
Taddeo already knew what came next.
“Ardizzi administration sits inside that inheritance tree,” Marco said.
Luca muttered a curse. “So Lelio could make the changes without putting his credentials anywhere near them.”
“Not necessarily Lelio personally,” Marco said. “Anyone with the right administrative token under his operation could send the substitutions through the queue and make the whole thing look like Valenti.”
Taddeo studied the four names. Ruggiero had worked a few warehouse details that overlapped Ardizzi interests.
Fenzo had once collected under Mauro before moving into freight, which meant almost nothing in a Family where crews changed assignments regularly.
Kallis had a long port-security history with no immediate red flag.
Russo looked cleaner than any of them, which made his sudden appearance inside communications more interesting rather than less.
“Do not assume all four are compromised.” Taddeo pointed toward the personnel list. “If somebody wants one man in one position, three innocent substitutions give the real one cover.”
Marco opened Russo’s history. “Communications is still the position I’d choose if I wanted the exchange to fall apart quietly. He can interfere with gate reports, lighting failures, emergency changes, or who hears which movement order without firing a weapon.”
“Who moved him into port protection originally?”
Marco searched several years backward, then stopped.
His expression answered before he did.
“Lelio sponsored the transfer three years ago.”
Nobody spoke for several seconds.
Taddeo read the old recommendation himself.
Russo had apparently performed well on two waterfront details, and Lelio suggested moving him from collections into freight protection.
Perfectly normal on its own. A capo recommending a competent soldier for work connected to his businesses was not evidence of betrayal.