204 When the Mafia Boss Ignored His Deaf Mother’s Warning at Dinner, I Translated Her Secret—Only to Discover the Men Who Ordered My Brother’s Murder Were Sitting at His Table / Chapter 15 / 70

Chapter 15 - The Cold Cut

"We don't have time to cut through two inches of reinforced maritime steel," Gabriel said, his eyes scanning the rusted seams of the container.

"We don't need to cut the whole hatch," I said, pointing to a small, circular pressure relief valve near the upper hinge. "Julian was an engineer. He knew if this container stayed submerged, internal pressure would buckle the seal unless there was a bypass. Look at the brass hex nut."

The nut was stamped with three small letters: *J.A.V.* Julian Arthur Vance.

"My brother's initials," I whispered. "He used a standard counter-clockwise reverse thread for all his custom fittings. He thought it was funny that the dock mechanics could never open his toolboxes without asking him for help."

I grabbed an adjustable pipe wrench from Navarro’s discarded toolbox. Gabriel took the handle with me, combining our strength against five years of lake corrosion. With a metallic screech that echoed like a gunshot through the warehouse, the valve groaned, popped, and spun loose.

Inside the recessed cavity sat a heavy, vacuum-sealed Pelican case wrapped in layers of vulcanized rubber.

I hauled it out. It was heavy, dripping foul-smelling lake slime, but the rubber had held.

"Navarro," Gabriel barked without turning around. "Get up."

Navarro scrambled to his feet, trembling like a leaf. "Gabriel, please. I swear I never wanted Julian dead. I was terrified—"

"You’re going to earn your air," Gabriel interrupted, shoving the pelican case into my arms. "You’re going to drive your truck to the commercial loading dock, just like Reyes told you to. You're going to make the drop."

Navarro went pale. "What? With what? The box is right there!"

Gabriel reached inside his coat, pulled out a spare decoy leather binder filled with blank restaurant inventory sheets from the SUV's trunk, and tossed it to Navarro. "You give them this. Tell them the seal was corroded and the hard drive is inside the back sleeve. You give us ten minutes."

"They’ll kill me the second they open it!" Navarro cried.

"They'll kill you right now if you say no," Gabriel replied coldly.

He didn't wait for Navarro's answer. Gabriel grabbed my wrist, pulling me up the iron stairs toward the side exit.

Within two minutes, we were back in the SUV. Gabriel slammed the door, leaning over the center console.

"Marco, Arthur—listen to me carefully," Gabriel said, the SUV’s engine roaring to life with a deep, predatory rumble as the tires bit into the gravel. "The feds outside Il Canto aren't a regular task force. They're Reyes's private cleanup crew. They want Beatrice out of that building so they can plant Sterling’s personal ledger in the floorboards."

"What about Beatrice?" my father asked, his face white as paper, his hands trembling violently. "Maya, is she in danger?"

"Beatrice knows how to defend herself," Gabriel said, his jaw rigid as he swung the SUV out onto the deserted expressway, accelerating past eighty miles per hour. "The problem isn't what they’ll do to her. The problem is what Beatrice will do to them if they try to touch her."

I looked at the Pelican case in my lap. "If Reyes wants a federal raid, we give her one. But we don't bring the decoy."

I pulled Julian's case open. Inside, dry and pristine against high-density foam, lay two external solid-state drives, a stack of watermarked bank routing slips, and a hand-written spiral notebook filled with Julian’s neat, cursive handwriting.

On the first page, written in black ink, was a title that made my heart slam against my ribs:

*PROJECT CAELUM: THE SEVENTH CIRCUIT OFFSHORE CLEARING HOUSE.*

Beneath it was a list of seven names.

The first name was Kathryn Reyes.