Chapter 12 A Notary’s Confession, Half-True
A Notary’s Confession, Half-True
The industrial hum of the warehouse didn’t change, but the air did - thicker, colder, as if the building itself had decided to listen.
Enzo’s gaze stayed locked on the corridor where the gloved man had vanished.
His shoulder brushed the doorframe at his back, hard enough to remind him he could still move fast. Valentina was inside the notary office beyond that locked consultation room, her hands on the edge of the desk as if she could wrestle truth out of wood and glass.
I can’t let her be alone with this.
The desire sat in him like a blade he couldn’t sheath: keep her connected to him, keep her within reach while she pulled at the one thread that might unravel the mastermind’s plan.
He’d been guarding rooms before - sealed loading docks, archive stacks, bank annexes with cameras that watched like animals - but this was different.
This room belonged to ink and signatures, to the kind of paper that decided the fate of empires.
And Valentina - Valentina was the only reason the right paper had ever come within reach.
From the other side of the door came a muffled sound: the scrape of a chair, then Valentina’s voice - sharp, controlled, nothing like the woman who could soften over dinner if you didn’t push too hard.
“ - You notarized it,” she said. “You stamped it. Don’t tell me you don’t know what you touched.”
Enzo leaned his head closer to the door, listening through the thin wall. Breath carried. A faint chemical tang leaked under the seal - something bitter and medical, like antiseptic. Not the clean scent of legal offices. Wrong. His fingers flexed around the pistol grip hidden under his coat.
“You want to talk about coercion,” the notary’s voice answered. Older, strained, trying to keep dignity intact. “I was threatened. I don’t - ”
Valentina cut in, softer and more dangerous. “Threatened by who?”
Silence held for half a heartbeat, then the notary exhaled as if it cost him. “By a man who didn’t show his face. By a voice. By instructions I was told would keep me safe.”
Enzo’s jaw tightened. Instructions. Voices. The kind of language you used when you wanted to sound like a witness instead of a participant.
He shifted his stance, boots quiet on concrete. The warehouse corridor behind him stayed empty, but he felt eyes anyway - heat against the back of his neck. The gloved man’s words replayed. Vito is where he’s useful.
Meaning Vito was alive, useful, and near enough to matter. Meaning someone had decided Enzo wasn’t the only one with leverage.
Meaning the mastermind didn’t need to be in the room to steer the outcome.
Enzo pressed his ear to the door again. Valentina’s breathing sounded steadier than the notary’s, like she was holding herself upright with willpower alone.
“Show me the chain,” Valentina demanded. “You have to keep records. Your office keeps records. Or you destroyed them and you let someone else forge them.”
“I didn’t forge anything.” The notary’s voice cracked on the last word. “I refused. I - ”
“You refused,” Valentina repeated, and her tone turned brittle. “And yet here we are, with sealed drawers compromised and a notarized threat letter that shouldn’t exist. With my documents moved like they were always meant for someone else.”
Enzo’s blood went colder. Sealed drawers compromised.
Threat letter. The warehouse had already given them evidence that the mastermind wasn’t improvising.
Whoever had replaced Valentina’s folder knew how the room worked, knew what the chain-of-custody binder would look like, knew what would make Valentina’s hands shake enough to reach for a confession.
And if the mastermind had known, then the notary had been known too.
Enzo took a breath and opened the locked consultation door just enough to slip the air out - just enough to make the room feel less sealed from his side. He didn’t step in. Not yet. Not until he saw what Valentina was walking into.
Inside, the consultation room was dimmer than the warehouse corridor, lit by a single lamp that turned the desk into a small island of light.
The notary sat behind it, hands trembling over a stack of paper as if he could smother them.
He wore a gray suit that had been pressed too recently, his tie too tight, his eyes too bright with panic.
Valentina stood on the far side, close enough that her shadow cut across his.
Her hair was pulled back with the kind of precision that usually belonged to boardrooms and funerals.
Now it belonged to war. Her gaze tracked the notary’s face, his mouth, his hands - measuring for lies the way Enzo measured distance.
She turned her head slightly when she felt Enzo move, but she didn’t look away from the notary.
“You don’t get to collapse into ‘coercion’ and pretend that’s the end of your responsibility,” Valentina said. “I’m not asking you to confess to a crime. I’m asking you to tell me who used you.”
The notary swallowed. “A broker. A political intermediary.”
Valentina’s brows drew together. “Name.”
His lips moved like he couldn’t decide between truth and survival. “I don’t have the name.”
Enzo stepped into the doorway then, filling the space with his presence, making sure the notary felt the weight of a decision. The lamp caught the edge of the pistol in Enzo’s coat when he shifted. Notary eyes darted to it and then away, as if looking directly would make the threat real.
“Try again,” Enzo said, low. “You have a name. You notarized documents that moved. You don’t move paper without someone telling you where it’s going.”
The notary’s gaze flicked to Valentina. Fear sharpened into a kind of pleading. “He didn’t give me - ”
Valentina leaned forward, hands flattening on the desk. She didn’t touch the paper. She wouldn’t give him that kind of comfort. “He did. He had to. You don’t get access to a sealed agreement like ours without a gatekeeper.”
The notary’s mouth worked. His voice turned small. “Donato Greco.”
The name hit Enzo like a fist. Donato Greco - political intermediary. The mastermind’s plan wasn’t just criminal. It was legal. It was public-facing. It was the kind of arrangement that could turn a secret agreement into a weapon pointed at senators, ministers, judges.
Valentina’s face changed in a way Enzo felt in his ribs - relief and dread tangled together. “Greco,” she repeated. “You’re sure.”
The notary nodded too fast. “Yes. He - he came with paperwork. He said the documents would be transferred under ‘proper channels’ and that no one would be hurt.”
Valentina’s voice went colder. “No one is ever hurt in the stories these men tell.”
Enzo kept his eyes on the notary’s hands. The fingers were twitching, hovering over a pen as if he wanted to hold something solid. Something inked. Something that made his confession official.
The notary licked his lips. “He told me the sealed pact would be used to force compliance. He said one signature could destroy empires.”
Valentina’s head tilted. “You’ve heard that before.”
“I - ” The notary looked down, then back up, and his eyes were shiny with terror. “He told me. He talked like he’d read it.”
Enzo’s throat tightened. That matched everything they’d discovered in the chain-of-custody binder - the forged witness line, the patient tampering. The mastermind didn’t just want the pact. He wanted the system around it to fail at exactly the right moment.
Valentina stepped closer. “Where are the documents now?”
The notary hesitated, and Enzo saw it - the moment when truth and fear fought each other. The notary’s gaze slid to a drawer behind him. Not the sealed drawers from their warehouse, but a smaller one in the notary’s desk. A place where a man might hide a copy.
Valentina followed his eyes and then, in a sudden movement, reached for the drawer.
Enzo caught her wrist.
The contact was quick, controlled, but it still sent heat up Valentina’s arm and into his skin. Her eyes snapped to him, sharp and offended at being restrained in front of the notary.
“Don’t,” she said, breathing hard. “He’s stalling.”
“He’s about to do something,” Enzo replied. His voice stayed level, but his pulse didn’t. “You don’t touch what he hasn’t offered. That’s how traps work.”
Valentina’s jaw flexed. “Traps are already working.”
Enzo didn’t argue. He released her wrist slowly, making sure she felt the choice rather than the control.
The notary’s face had gone pale. “Please,” he whispered. “Please don’t open it. It’s - ”
Enzo didn’t step forward. “Explain.”
The notary’s voice came out ragged. “He made me keep a copy of the transfer authorization. Not the sealed pact itself. Just the authorization. So if anyone questioned it - if the paperwork was ever challenged - I could show I complied.”
Valentina’s eyes narrowed. “So you have the authorization.”
“I have - had it.” His gaze darted again, then he looked at Enzo like he was asking for mercy. “But it was taken. After I notarized. After I stamped. It wasn’t supposed to be moved that fast. I thought I - ”
Valentina’s voice cut in. “You thought you’d be safe.”
The notary flinched. “Yes.”
Enzo watched the notary’s throat bob as he swallowed. The lamp light made shadows under his eyes. His hands were shaking so hard the pen rattled against paper.
“Who took it?” Enzo asked.
The notary’s eyes flicked to the corner of the room where a wall vent sat. His voice dropped. “A man with gloves. A man who said he was from your side.”
Valentina went still. Enzo felt the shift before she spoke it. Her body tightened like she’d been pulled by a string.
“You mean the gloved man in the corridor,” Valentina said.
The notary nodded. “He said he was there to ensure chain-of-custody compliance. He said the sealed pact couldn’t be left unsecured. He said the resin cradle had an insertion seam and that if the seam was disturbed - if anyone saw the verification stamp smear - everything would collapse.”