Blinding the Spotter
The water was impossibly cold, shocking Elias back to the hyper-awareness he hadn't needed since his Homicide days. He moved slowly, deliberately, using the tiny, dark swells of the cove to mask the faint splash of his stroke.
The fishing trawler, the "spotter," was a derelict machine, its engine barely idling. Elias surfaced quietly behind its stern. He could hear the faint, crackling sound of a radio transmission and the low murmur of two men talking.
He quickly reached the trawler's propeller shaft. Working by feel, he attached the magnetic GPS tracker near the stern, right above the waterline. This wouldn't stop the boat, but it would give Lena a clean tracking signal once they moved.
Next came the sabotage. He located the main mooring lines tied to a buoy. If the trawler needed to move quickly—to intercept a threat or escape—they would rely on cutting these lines and firing the engine. Instead, Elias secured the lines with multiple, tightly cinched zip ties just below the water's surface, binding the main lines to the heavy anchor chain. If the crew tried to cut the mooring lines, the taut Dyneema would resist, buying Elias and his friends precious minutes.
He gave a final, clean push off the hull and swam toward the shore. He saw no lights moving on the trawler's deck. They were blinded and subtly tied down.
The Landing Site
Elias swam to the darkest, most secluded stretch of the shoreline—a small, natural stone jetty, barely visible, situated directly below the largest, oldest villa on the hillside. The villa, draped in ivy and shadows, had to be the final destination.
He emerged from the water, dripping, and scrambled onto the slick stones. He located the source of the metallic run-off he'd seen earlier: a section of the stone jetty was freshly scraped and wet, smelling faintly of the same chemical residue.
A heavy object had been lifted here recently. And sure enough, about ten feet up the narrow, winding path that led to the villa's private gate, he found the faint but distinct impression of fresh tire tracks—tracks that looked too wide and deep for a standard passenger car.
A vehicle designed for discreet, heavy transport.
He pulled out his phone, sending a single, coded text message to Lena: VILLA-1.
Just as he slipped the phone back into its waterproof pouch, a low, powerful sound began to build on the water. The Stygian's engine. It was time.
The Transfer
Elias quickly retreated into the thick, overgrown scrub near the base of the villa's high stone wall. He heard the whine of the racing yacht approaching the stone jetty.
A moment later, the private gate in the high wall of the villa opened, and a large, black SUV, customized with heavy-duty off-road tires, silently backed out and down the path toward the jetty.
Two men in dark suits, clearly security, exited the SUV. They were met by a third man—the captain of The Stygian—who was carrying a heavy, rectangular object wrapped in black, impact-resistant foam.
"The Relic," Elias whispered.
The captain handed the object to the security men, who carefully loaded it into the rear of the SUV. The transaction itself was shockingly brief—no long negotiations, no tense standoff. It was a simple, professional handover of goods. Il Fantasma wasn't here. The buyer was.
As the SUV turned to drive back up the path toward the villa, Elias got a clear, split-second glimpse of the driver as they paused at the gate. It wasn't the hulking, soldierly type like Metzger. This was a slender, older man with close-cropped white hair and a look of cold, impatient authority.
And then, Elias saw the final, chilling piece of the puzzle. On the driver's hand, resting on the steering wheel, was a massive, ornate signet ring—not gold, but dark, carved stone, bearing a heraldic crest. It was a crest Elias had seen before, years ago, in a dusty file from an old art fraud case.
The crest belonged to the House of Falco, a Venetian aristocratic family with centuries of history and an infamous, hidden legacy tied to the shadowy world of closed-door antiquities collecting.
The buyer wasn't just a rich criminal; he was Conté Alessandro Falco, the last living head of a notorious, deeply connected dynasty. And he was home, just a hundred yards away.
Markus's Diversion
Elias knew he couldn't stop the SUV now. His priority was the villa—to disrupt the meeting and keep the Relic from being immediately whisked away into Falco's private, sealed vault.
He pulled the flare gun from his pouch and aimed not at the men, but at the sprawling, overgrown Wisteria vine climbing the villa's wall near the security gate.
WHUMP. CRACKLE.
The distress flare rocketed up and burst against the stone, showering the garden in sparks and blinding, emergency crimson light.
Instantly, the men on the jetty scattered, and the two security guards from the SUV roared in confusion. The glare of the flare reflected off the black SUV as it jammed to a stop just inside the gate.
"Now, Markus!" Elias thought, retreating further into the darkness.
Right on cue, a sudden, dissonant cacophony erupted from the Portofino hillside above. The art activists, activated by Markus's signal, had moved to the closest point they could reach, launching their spontaneous performance—a wall of competing, amplified opera and techno music, overlaid with shouts of protest. It was loud, confusing, and effective chaos.
The Next Move
Elias swam quickly back to the chartered boat, hauling himself onboard.
"The spotter is stalled, the Relic is at the villa, and the buyer is Conté Falco," he reported, breathless, handing the GPS tracker to Lena. "Get us out of here, Lena. We have to go straight to Genoa."
"Genoa? Why?" Lena asked, firing the engine.
"Falco will assume the threat is local thieves or perhaps the local police tipped off by the noise," Elias said, pulling on a towel. "He won't use the villa now. He'll take the Relic to his most secure location, and for the House of Falco, that's not a villa—it's the family's ancient shipping vault in the old port of Genoa. It's the only place he can truly seal it away from a quick search warrant."
"And The Stygian?" Markus asked.
Elias glanced at the small light on the GPS tracker, already moving slowly away from Paraggi Bay.
"The yacht will try to outrun us and lay low. But we don't need the yacht. We need to track the SUV. Lena, follow that signal. It's our only link to Falco's front door."
The little tour boat sputtered into the open water, a tiny, determined vessel pursuing a black, high-security SUV carrying a millennium-old artifact and heading straight into the dark, massive, historic labyrinth of the Port of Genoa.
The Alpine shadow had been a story of corporate greed; this was now a story of dynastic hubris—a history that ran centuries deep, and a thief who believed his lineage made him untouchable.
The chase is on, leading them to the sprawling, ancient port of Genoa and directly into the hidden world of a powerful, aristocratic crime family. This sets the stage perfectly for the final conclusion to this mystery.