REESE

chapter seventeen.

No one wanted to confront Johnathon.

The brothers were sitting at a conference table alongside their best hackers. Everyone looked absolutely terrible. The men were sitting with their ties loosened, hair disheveled, and fists clenched. Bottles of alcohol were spread messily across the table. The bottles of liquid poison seemed to be the only things keeping everyone sane over the past few days. The search for Reese Vanderbilt was actively consuming all of their energy.

"Don, credo di aver trovato qualcosa." A young teenage boy spoke out amidst the frantic typing and voices of his fellow members.

(Don, I think I found something.)

"Si pensa?" Alex asked tiredly.

(You think?)

The young boy hesitantly nodded his head.

"Bring your laptop over here, Mauro." Gavino commanded.

The scrawny teenage hacker cautiously walked over to his four bosses. The room went silent as everyone waited to see if Mauro had actually found something useful, something that could lead them closer to the American Mafia or Reese Vanderbilt. Gavino, Max and Rocco all moved to stand behind Alex's chair. Mauro placed his laptop in front of the four Italian leaders and waited for them to read the document he barely managed to find.

"A.E?" Max questioned. "Where have I heard that before?"

"It's a very famous club known worldwide. The location is right here in New York." Mauro explained.

"I know that club." Rocco realized. "It's popular because no one can get in. It is one of New York's best kept secrets. No one knows who owns it, no one knows what goes on inside, and no one has ever succeeded in finding out anything about it. It's completely and utterly a mystery."

The room was dead silent as the other hackers looked at Mauro wearily. Starting off with mentioning A.E, a club that no one had any clue about, was not the best way to fix their lack of information problem.

"What does A.E have anything to do with finding Reese Vanderbilt?" Gavino questioned.

Mauro quickly closed his eyes, took a shaky breath in and prayed that the next information he presented was accurate. He clicked out of the document and opened another tab. "We know that on paper the American Mafia just does not exist. It doesn't matter how long we look, who we hire, or what we hack. If Reese Vanderbilt, one of the world's biggest tech moguls, is in-charge of encrypting and hiding their mafia files, then we are not going to find anything." He slowly exclaimed.

The Di Genova's gritted their teeth and glared at the young boy. They knew what he was telling them was one hundred percent correct, but that didn't mean they liked hearing it. It just confirmed what everyone was starting to realize, when concerning the American Mafia, all their efforts would come up empty.

Mauro gulped as he met the angered expressions of his bosses. He quickly moved onto his main point. "The American Mafia can control documents, data and information, but what they can't control is people."

"What are you trying to say?" Alex questioned while leaning back in his seat.

"Rumours." The young boy stated. "People talk, information gets spread. It doesn't matter how secure an empire is, there is bound to be a moment where someone, somewhere, slips up and even the most powerful people in the world can't do anything about it." He clicked on the new tab he opened up. Instantly, CCTV footage popped up showing a man and a woman smoking under a streetlight. Everyone moved closer to the laptop. "I found this when I was scouring the net for any mention of the American Mafia. It took me days but I found this video. At first glance the video seems completely normal, until you actually listen to what they are talking about." The brothers looked at each other, eyebrows raised in curiosity.