THE LULLABY KEY : THE FALL
CHAPTER 40: The End of the Beginning
Three weeks passed.
Three weeks of planning. Training. Waiting.
Three weeks of watching the news, reading Martin Chen’s articles, tracking Marchetti’s network as it unraveled.
Three weeks of sleeping in a concrete bunker, eating canned food, and dreaming of the stars.
On the twenty-second day, Zero received a message.
A name. An address. A photograph.
August Marchetti’s real name was Augusto Marchetti. He was seventy-eight years old. He had been born in Palermo, Sicily, immigrated to the United States at age twenty, and built a fortune in real estate, shipping, and private military contracting. He had never been photographed. Never been fingerprinted. Never been arrested.
But he had made a mistake.
He had visited his mother’s grave.
In a small cemetery in New Jersey.
Under a headstone that bore his real name.
Zero had found the headstone through genealogical records, cross-referenced with flight manifests, credit card receipts, and traffic camera footage.
Augusto Marchetti had been in New Jersey on the same day that Lena’s cabin was broken into.
The same day that the photograph of her bedroom was taken.
Lena stared at the photograph on Zero’s laptop. An old man. Gray hair. A cane. A face that could have belonged to anyone’s grandfather.
“That’s him?”
“That’s him. Augusto Marchetti. The ghost.”
Lena’s hands trembled. “Where is he now?”
Zero pulled up a map. “He flew to Switzerland two days ago. He has a chalet in the Alps. A private estate. Guarded by former special forces.”
“We need to go after him.”
“We can’t. Switzerland won’t extradite him. He has political connections. He’s protected.”
“Then we need to make sure he’s not protected anymore.”
Lena turned to Marcus. “Can you get me to Switzerland?”
“I can try. But it’s risky. Marchetti has eyes everywhere.”
“Then we use his eyes against him. We leak a fake story. Make him think we’re going somewhere else. And then we strike.”
Zero nodded slowly. “It could work. But it’s a long shot.”
“Every shot is a long shot. That’s never stopped us before.”
Lena looked at the photograph of Augusto Marchetti.
The man who had killed her mother.
The man who had destroyed her father.
The man who had been running the world from the shadows for thirty years.
“I’m going to bring him back,” she said. “In chains. On a plane. For the whole world to see.”
Marcus put his hand on her shoulder.
“Then let’s go get him.”
They packed their bags.
The bunker was empty within the hour.
Behind them, the red light blinked one last time.
And then it went dark.
The mole had finally been found.
Zero had killed her herself.
But that’s a story for another chapter.