Chapter 3: Two Choices

The rain didn’t let up. Turin’s streets had turned into a flowing black river, water pooling in the low spots of the asphalt, reflecting the yellow glow of the streetlights overhead. Andrea Moretti stood by the second-floor window of the police station, pinching the wet handle of a coffee cup between his fingers. His gaze wasn’t on the view outside; it was locked on the blind spot beneath the police car’s searchlight sweep down on the street. There, a black Mercedes SUV sat parked at the corner, headlights off, quiet as a wolf lying in wait in the dark.

“He’s here.” Katya Damico’s voice came from behind him, steady with a calculated calm. She was placing the original key letter into a climate-controlled preservation box, moving gently as if defusing a bomb. “Francesco Vitale. He’s not going to wait any longer. That fire at the warehouse didn’t just burn the cargo; it burned his last shred of patience.”

Andrea turned around, his brow knotted tight. He looked toward the closed door of the conference room, where a chill seeped through the gap, mixed with the dampness of the rain. “Let him in.” he said.

The door pushed open, and the wind and rain rushed in with the humidity. Francesco Vitale stood in the doorway, draped in a sharply tailored black cashmere coat. Rainwater dripped from the tips of his hair, forming small dark circles on the floor. He didn’t step inside immediately; instead, he remained on the threshold, his gaze sweeping over Andrea before settling on the preservation box in Katya’s hands. That look reminded Andrea of a butcher staring at livestock waiting for the kill—cold, precise, and utterly without mercy.

“Detective Moretti.” Vitale spoke, his voice low, carrying the distinctive rounded tail-end of a local Turin accent. “Long time no see. You’ve lost some weight. I suppose mourning a fallen friend takes its toll.”

Andrea didn’t offer him a seat. He just pointed to the two folding chairs by the door. “Sit. Or stand. I don’t have time for old-world pleasantries.”

Vitale smiled. The corners of his mouth lifted only a fraction, yet it radiated a relaxing chill that made the hair on one’s neck stand up. He walked to the chair, his fingers brushing the back of it, but he didn’t sit. He stayed standing, leaning forward, and the pressure in the room doubled. “I heard you found the ‘key’ in a corner of the basement of the Old Palace.” He deliberately slowed his speech, letting each word drop into the air like a hammer nail. “And that letter. Mr. Barberini is very concerned about it. After all, it holds his mother’s name, and… some testimony that could clear your family’s name.”

Katya looked up, her hand pausing for a second before she continued to place the preservation box into the safe, the metal making a faint scraping sound. “Mr. Vitale, we are law enforcement, not a pawnshop. What do you want to trade for stolen goods?”

“Clean hands.” Vitale stared at Andrea. “The stain on the Moretti family has hung for a century. Your grandfather, my rival, that old bastard Vitale ancestor… the dirty work he did at the Milan port is still locked away in the Vatican archives. The Isabella Sforza curator holds the key to the decryption annotations. But in my hands, I have the tampered original ledger.”

Andrea narrowed his eyes, crushing the coffee cup handle until it began to warp. “I don’t care what’s in your hands. I only care about that letter.”

“The ink on the letter reacts uniquely,” Vitale raised a single finger, waving it lightly in the air. “Normal solvents will make the writing disappear entirely. But I know Ms. Damico’s technical capabilities are limited. She can’t permanently reveal those hidden words without destroying the paper’s fibers. Unless you hand the original over to me. I have a specialized lab, with pH-regulated tanks. I can make those words surface, or I can sink them into oblivion.”

This was a trap. Andrea read the poison in the man’s words instantly. If he handed over the original, Vitale would control the flow of information, potentially destroying key evidence and turning the so-called “clearance” into a transaction to be bought and sold. But if he refused, Vitale might use his influence in the Turin port, or even directly kidnap Isabella, the old woman who held the decryption key.

In the conference room, only the ticking of the wall clock remained. Each second of the needle’s movement felt like it was slicing through Andrea’s nerves. He glanced and saw Vitale’s gaze never leaving the safe. Inside it lay the letter, and it held Andrea’s last trump card.

“How do you plan to prove your innocence?” Andrea asked, his tone as flat as if he were asking about the weather.

“You just need to take one look.” Vitale pulled a black leather folder from his inner coat pocket and tossed it onto the table. The folder was thin; the papers inside gleamed a cold white under the lights. “These are copies of internal memorandums between the Maritime Guild and the Milan Port Authority from back then. There’s a signature in there that proves your grandfather was only passively involved, not part of the core smuggling operation. As long as I get the original letter as a ‘show of good faith,’ I’ll give you these documents and help you apply to the prosecution for a review.”

Katya leaned in to glance at the folder, showing no interest whatsoever. She simply said, coolly, “Mr. Vitale, if these documents are real, they should have been submitted in the initial trial ten years ago. If they’re fake, then this is fraud.”

Vitale withdrew his gaze, the smile on his face freezing for a moment before returning to normal. “That’s just the inertia of the bureaucracy. Detective Moretti, you’re a smart man. You understand that some truths exist only on paper. And paper is the most fragile thing there is.”

Andrea stood up and walked to the window. The condensation on the glass blurred the rainy scene outside. He looked at his own reflection in the glass; his expression was cold and hard as iron. “I can consider handing over the letter,” he said, with his back to Vitale. “On the condition that you sign a statement here, in front of me and Officer Damico, waiving any form of harm toward Ms. Isabella Sforza. And I need to see the original memorandum, not a copy.”

Vitale let out a short, nasal breath, as if he’d heard a ridiculous joke. “You underestimate me, cop. A statement? I’m only interested in the result. The process is my problem.”

“Then it’s your problem.” Andrea turned around, his gaze sharp as a blade. “Now, get out. You have thirty seconds. If you exceed that, I’ll call it in as witness intimidation and file for a raid on the Maritime Guild headquarters. You know what that means—your crews, your warehouses, your ledgers, all of it will be turned upside down.”

Vitale stood still, rain dripping from his coat hem, making a very light tapping sound on the floor. He stared at Andrea; there was no anger in his eyes, only a kind of appreciative assessment. He was calculating costs, weighing the pros and cons.

“Thirty seconds.” Vitale said quietly. “You’d better count them right, Moretti.”

Andrea didn’t speak. He just raised his wrist and checked his old mechanical watch. Tick. Tock.

Vitale grabbed the black folder from the table and turned toward the door. His hand went into his coat pocket, seemingly pulling out something. Andrea’s gaze locked onto that motion, muscles tensing, ready to charge and intercept at any moment.

Vitale stopped, his back to them.

“The letter is in the safe,” his voice rasped, carrying a mix of fatigue and provocation. “When you count to thirty, I’ll leave. But I advise you—don’t use that cheap X-ray machine on it. That will agitate the chemical compounds in the ink and make you lose the chance to develop it permanently. You won’t just be destroying evidence; you’ll be destroying your own hope.”

With that, he pulled the door open and vanished into the wind and rain.

The moment the door closed, the conference room fell back into silence. Andrea didn’t go after him. Instead, he went straight to the safe. Katya stood behind him, arms crossed, complex light flickering in her eyes.

“Was he right?” Katya asked. “Does that X-ray machine actually cause irreversible damage?”

Andrea opened the safe and took out the preservation box. The letter lay quietly inside, the yellowed paper edges curled like a dry leaf. He picked it up and brought it close to the desk lamp. At a specific angle, that line of tiny writing indeed seemed to flicker in and out, like a ghost wandering.

“He’s lying,” Andrea said, his finger brushing the surface of the letter, rough and cold to the touch. “For this type of ink formula, what I need is an acidic environment, not X-rays. X-rays can only illuminate the structure on the back of the paper; they can’t change the ink’s chemical reaction. He wants me to think the evidence is damaged, so I’ll stop digging deep and just accept his ‘clean’ files, which might have been edited.”

Katya nodded, pulling a small, portable X-ray fluorescence detector from her pocket. It was her newest piece of equipment, capable of analyzing paper fibers and ink residues without touching the original. “But he has a point. If we actually used the X-ray, Vitale would have an excuse to accuse us of ‘destroying evidence’ and take the moral high ground in court. It’s a reverse use of information advantage.”

Andrea placed the X-ray detector on the table but didn’t turn it on. He looked at the machine; the metal casing reflected a cold, sharp light under the lamp. This was a dilemma: protecting witness Isabella’s safety meant guarding against Vitale’s retaliation; getting key intelligence meant cracking that forged memorandum. And the letter was the core of it all.

“I have an idea,” Andrea said suddenly. His eyes sharpened, like a sword drawn from its sheath.

“What?” Katya raised an eyebrow.

“If he thinks I’ll use the X-ray to analyze the letter, why not let him believe I already did?” Andrea picked up the detector and quickly turned it on, a slight beep sounding. He waved it over the letter. He knew it was useless, but he made the movements look authentic enough, even triggering the device’s short alarm signals a few times to simulate a “detected anomaly” effect.

“Look,” he told Katya, a cold smile on his face. “The ink layer structure is unstable. Signal lost. I ‘destroyed’ it.”

Katya played along, showing a surprised expression before frowning. “Then what? We need to re-sample.”

“No need.” Andrea put the letter back in the preservation box, then opened the safe and retrieved another pre-prepared file copy. It was a high-resolution scan he had secretly made last night, precise to the micrometer, enough to restore all the details. “Let the original stay in Vitale’s world. Let him mess with it. We just need this digital copy. And Vitale will think I’ve lost my only physical piece of evidence, so he’ll lower his guard and continue searching for Isabella. That way, we buy time.”

He stood up and threw the X-ray detector casually onto the table. The machine was still buzzing, like a dying insect.

“Let’s go.” Andrea picked up his coat and walked toward the door. “The rain stopped. Time to check if our ‘witness’ is still alive.”

Through the gap as the door opened and closed, cold wind rushed in, making the papers on the desk flutter.

Outside the police station, the rain had indeed lightened, leaving only fine, dense threads of rain. Andrea stood under the eaves, lighting a cigarette. The flash of the match illuminated half his face. Smoke rose into the cold air and quickly dissipated.

“Vitale will go for Isabella,” Katya stood beside him, her voice cut into fragments by the sound of the rain. “We checked the surveillance blind spots at the Vatican archives. In the last twenty years, she’s never left that old building more than three times, and every time she had two armed guards with her. If Vitale dares to touch her, he’s declaring war on the entire European intelligence network. That’s not really his style.”

“He’s a businessman,” Andrea exhaled a cloud of smoke. “Businessmen don’t make losing deals, unless they see bigger profits. The annotation key in Isabella’s hands can not only unlock the old accounts but also open new archives. What’s recorded there might be another deal he wants to destroy.”

“Another deal?”

Andrea didn’t slow down. The roar of the engine grew louder, eventually swallowing all the whispers of the past.