Chapter 5: Smoke and Steel
That night, Amara met with her inner circle Enzo, Rocco, and her cousin Chiara, a tech genius who ran their cyber-ops from a villa outside Posillipo.
They gathered in a candlelit war room. Maps, blueprints, and photos littered the table.
"I want eyes on every Romano property in Campania," Amara ordered. "Their ports, their banks, their back channels. I want to choke them without drawing blood."
Chiara typed rapidly, her fingers flying over the keys. "Already done. I hacked their logistics software. I can slow every shipment by at least forty-eight hours."
Enzo pointed to a property near Salerno. "We hit this first. It's not heavily guarded. A soft warning."
Amara shook her head. "Too soft. I want to hurt them where they feel it. Emotionally. Financially. Psychologically."
Her eyes fell on a framed picture of Luca's late mother's charity foundation, a project he personally funded.
"There," she said. "We don't burn it. We expose it. Fraud. Embezzlement. Turn the law against him. Make the city question his clean image."
Rocco whistled. "That's cold."
"That's war," Amara replied.
The plan was executed flawlessly. By morning, Romano headlines flooded Italian news outlets:
'Romano Family Charity Under Investigation for Fraud.'
Luca's phone rang nonstop. His lawyers scrambled. And his enemies took notice.
Amara watched it all unfold from her study, sipping espresso.
And for the first time since her father's death...
She smiled.