Chapter 7 - THE TRAITOR IN THE ROOM
The moment the name Sarah Carter left Leah’s lips, something shifted in the atmosphere of the cabin.
It wasn't a loud noise. It wasn't a gasp or a sudden movement.
It was a complete, horrifying freeze.
Vincent didn't react immediately to the name itself, but his senses—honed over twenty years of surviving betrayals, ambushes, and mob wars—instinctively caught a subtle change in the air behind him.
Standing near the galley door, Frankie—the bodyguard who had carried Baby Luca across the tarmac at Teterboro—suddenly stopped moving.
His body went entirely rigid. His chest stopped rising and falling. His face, already pale from Vincent’s earlier interrogation, drained of every remaining drop of color, turning a sickly, ghostly gray beneath the bright cabin lights. His eyes, wide with a sudden, overwhelming terror, locked onto the floor carpet, refusing to look toward the front of the cabin.
He didn't move a muscle, but the sheer, visceral panic radiating off him was as loud as a gunshot in the silent room.
Vincent noticed the reaction instantly.
He didn't jump up. He didn't shout. He slowly stood up from his crouch, holding Baby Luca against his chest with his left arm, while his right hand slowly closed around the tiny black disc, hiding it inside his fist.
Vincent slowly turned his body around, his broad shoulders rotating until he was facing his own bodyguard.
The silence stretched long and agonizing.
Frankie kept his eyes glued to a tiny stain on the carpet near his shoes. His hands twitched at his sides, his fingers opening and closing rhythmically, his breath coming in shallow, silent hitches through his nose. He looked like a man standing before a firing squad, waiting for the command to be given.
"Frankie," Vincent said quietly.
Frankie didn't answer. He avoided Vincent’s eyes, his jaw trembling slightly beneath his clean-shaven cheeks.
"Look at me, Frankie," Vincent ordered, his tone flat, devoid of emotion, yet carrying a terrifying, absolute weight.
Frankie slowly, painfully lifted his head. His eyes were bloodshot, swimming with a sickening combination of guilt, terror, and desperate regret. He tried to speak, but his throat was so dry no sound came out—only a high, wheezing gasp.
Leah, standing beside Vincent’s hip, looked from the terrifying crime boss to the pale bodyguard standing near the galley exit.
Her sharp, observant eyes caught the subtle detail that everyone else had missed: Frankie’s right hand was hovering just two inches away from the concealed pocket inside his dark suit jacket—not where his firearm was kept, but higher up, near his lapel, where a small leather notebook was tucked into his breast pocket.
Leah realized it in a flash of terrifying clarity.
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This man didn't just know who her missing mother was.
He had been waiting for her name to be spoken. He was part of the network that had placed the black disc under her kitchen table, and he was standing five feet away from her asleep three-year-old sister.
