REESE

chapter twenty seven.

Reese POV:

"Gentlemen, thank you for coming on such short notice."

I leaned forward in my seat as I listened to my dad make a couple of opening remarks, signalling the start of the emergency meeting that was called into order last night and was now taking place bright and early on a Saturday morning. We were all seated at a huge conference table with various copies of files positioned in front of us. My dad was sitting at the head of the table on my left, Stephen and Carver were sitting side by side in front of me, and Alex, Gavino, Max and Rocco were seated to my right. Everyone's attention was on my dad as he quickly took a glance at his spreadsheets in front of him and then moved his gaze onto the Rutherfords.

"Stephen, Carver, I know you two have prior business engagements that you need to get to, so let's make this short and fast."

My dad clasped his hands on the table as he looked over at Stephen and Alexander. "All three of our mafias have been targets of irregular attacks that have been taking place on American soil." Both Stephen and Alex's faces morphed into one of anger at the reminder. "At first, we believed these violent assaults were simply insignificant attempts of thievery from mercenary groups that got lucky. Our transport routes have been the same for a while now, it wasn't surprising that someone finally noticed and made an attempt to derail our operations. Call it intuition or call it luck, but we figured out that these attacks were anything but irregular or random."

He picked up the remote that was beside his hands and pointed it to the middle of the conference table. Instantly, T.V screens rose up from the middle of the table. There was an individual screen in front of every seated person playing attack footage from the various strikes. I watched as everyone looked at the footage of the attacks on our mafias. The urgency, irritation, and anger in the room grew noticeably larger.

"One attack is luck, two attacks is a coincidence, three or more?"

"That's a pattern."

I took my eyes off the screens and looked down at the files before me. They highlighted the date, time, and location of every attack. Once the first attack ensued, my dad and I completely changed up our transport routes. The only people that knew of the new routes were Stephen and Alex. We sent them detailed portfolios of not only the weapons that we were trading with them, but the time frame in which they would be receiving them, alongside the routes our vehicles would be taking. They provided the same thing to us regarding the drugs and shipments we were receiving from them.

These files were a condition of the signed alliance. Each Don agreed that if they wanted to conduct honest business with one another, then all parties should keep their transports with the trade goods transparent. It was simply smart business, but the problem was that the files somehow landed in the wrong hands.

"Whoever these people are, they know not only of our alliance, but what we are trading and when." My dad continued. "There is only one way they figured out that information. An inside source."

Tension was thick in the air. Everyone wants to believe that they have complete control over their mafia members but leaks are common. Greed tends to overpower loyalty. Find that one person who values materialism more, you have a direct way in.

"Thankfully, I believe that we caught the betrayal in the early stages so it will be easy to eradicate the source." My dad looked over at me, silently communicating that it was time for me to take over. I gave my dad a short nod.

We had yet to talk about the events that transpired at the Ball yesterday. While leaving the Ball with Eli, Raf and Simon, I got a call from Pria who was actively working with Cryptic's tech team to find out any information they could about who was behind the attacks. After the phone call, I immediately made my way over to Cryptic headquarters to help out. We worked all night, and I didn't end up going back to the Vanderbilt estate to talk to my dad.