Chapter 10
With a cold, deliberate flick of his thumb, Hugo popped the rear casing off.
Inside, the military-grade firing pins had been completely removed. In their place sat three inert copper bypass wires, spliced neatly into a dead circuit.
"I swapped the firing codes and pulled the detonator pins four hours ago," Hugo said, his voice dropping into a dangerous, thrilling whisper. "Salvatore's heavy ordnance is dead iron. If he tries to shell the docks tonight, not a single round will leave the barrels."
My eyes widened. "You disarmed your own batteries?"
"I disarmed *his*," Hugo corrected, his mouth curling into a slow, devastating smile. "The Nardelli guns answer only to me. And right now, those guns are pointed at your father's rear guard, waiting for my signal."
He tossed the gutted detonator onto the table. It clattered against the maps, useless scrap metal.
Then, with agonizing slowness, Hugo reached into his vest once more.
He didn't pull a weapon.
He pulled out a small, metallic frequency bridge—the second half of the encrypted radio transponder, perfectly calibrated to override the estate's jamming grid. He clicked the bridge into the side of my German transponder.
The red LED flared into brilliant, blinding emerald green.
The internal vacuum tubes inside the vintage casing began to hum, a high-pitched, electric whine cutting through the silence of the armory study. Outside, the distant roar of Salvatore’s war convoy grew fainter as the fleet accelerated toward the southern cliffs, racing blindly into the dark.
Hugo leaned down, his mouth brushing against the curve of my ear, his breath searing against my skin.
"Your phantom is transmitting, Alessia," Hugo whispered, his hand coming up to wrap firmly around my right wrist, guiding my trembling fingers toward the chrome toggle switch of the microphone on the table.
His body was an iron wall behind me, his chest rising and falling against my back, pinning me in place.
"Tell me who she is," Hugo demanded, his voice thick with a dark, intoxicating command that made every nerve in my body tingle. "Tell me whose voice is about to come through that speaker, or I swear to Christ, I will drag you down to that cliff myself and make you watch the end of this war from the front row."
"Hugo..." I breathed, my hand shaking beneath his heavy, warm grip.
"Flip the switch, *cara*," he commanded against my neck, his lips grazing my skin with a fierce, possessive heat that stole the last shred of my defenses. "Let us hear the ghost."
My trembling fingers closed around the cold chrome toggle.
I pushed the switch up.
*Click.*
The emerald light flashed. A wave of harsh, rhythmic white noise hissed through the small paper cone speaker, crackling with the violent static of the storm outside.
Then, through the howling interference of sleet and encrypted waves, the static suddenly cleared.
A low, resonant tone chimed once—the clear, bell-like strike of a silver spoon against crystal.
A voice cut through the speaker.
It was smooth, aristocratic, dripping with effortless Neapolitan elegance and the cold, unyielding authority of a queen who had spent twenty years ruling the shadows.
It was not the voice of a phantom.
It was a voice that did not speak of troop movements, or artillery grids, or Salvatore’s doomed convoy.
Instead, the woman began to sing—softly, flawlessly, in a low, haunting contralto that had not been heard in my father’s house since the fire outside Naples two decades ago:
*"Ninna nanna, ninna oh... questo fiore a chi lo do... lo darò alla mia bambina, che è la regina della marina..."*
The childhood lullaby.
The exact, hidden verse my mother used to whisper into my hair while she rocked me to sleep in the dark, before the world burned down.
My hand froze on the microphone. The breath tore from my throat in a strangled, silent gasp.
Behind me, Hugo went utterly, completely rigid.
