Summary

Sunny Alexander-Johnson and Henry James, writers for Dark Sides of the Truth magazine, are investigating a potential murder case involving the family of Marco Bianchi, with a focus on his daughter Rosa Anita Bianchi, who seems to have vanished.

Abstract

In "When The Program Fails People Die Part XII," Sunny Alexander-Johnson and Henry James grapple with the unsettling reality that someone may be out to kill them or their loved ones. Despite this, they continue their investigation into the Bianchi family following Marco's imprisonment. His son Mario has taken over the family business, while his other son Stefano has pursued education abroad. The trail leads to Marco's daughter, Rosa Anita Bianchi, who has no discernible digital footprint beyond her birth certificate. The team attempts to lure her out by leaving a provocative message on a thug's confiscated phone. As they await a response, they speculate that Rosa may have chosen to become a "ghost" for unknown reasons. The narrative sets the stage for the next installment, "When The Program Fails People Die Part XIII."

Opinions

The authors suggest that if Mario Bianchi wanted Victoria dead, it would have been executed professionally, indicating a level of respect for the efficiency of hired assassins.
There is a shared sentiment among the investigators that Stefano Bianchi's academic pursuits in Berlin are genuine and unlikely to be a cover for criminal activities.
The team is skeptical about the effectiveness of their initial message left for the unknown adversary, considering the possibility that their target has access to sophisticated technology and may require more time to trace the call.
The investigators express a belief that Rosa Anita Bianchi's disappearance was a deliberate choice to become invisible, or a "ghost," hinting at a deeper mystery surrounding her motives.
The narrative conveys a sense of unease and the high stakes involved in the investigation, with the team members accustomed to living on the edge and facing potential danger.

Fiction

When The Program Fails People Die Part XII

A Sunny Alexander-Johnson And Henry James Series

My name is Sunny Alexander-Johnson, and I’m Henry James, and we’re writers for Dark Sides of the Truth magazine.

Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV, Part V, Part VI, Part VII, Part VIII, Part IX, Part X, Part XI

Trying to act normal, doing normal routine things is pretty difficult when your thoughts are regularly weighed down with a nagging feeling there’s somebody out there willing to kill you.

Knowing that there’s somebody out there perfectly willing to kill one of your friends or a member of your family.

Somehow for the next two weeks, that’s exactly what we did. The first part of week one, Donnie Martin and Rebecca Wu had come back to us with information on Marco Bianchi’s family. Marco’s wife had passed away, leaving him to raise two boys and a daughter.

One of the sons, Mario Bianchi, had decided to step in and run the family business while his father was on vacation for the rest of his life at Riker’s.

We supposed Mario would have reason to kill Victoria, but then, there were a couple of things wrong with that hypothesis.

First, just like his father Marco, if Mario wanted Victoria dead, well, she would have already been gone. By a hit professionally performed compliments of some well-paid assassin.

Second and probably more important, why would Mario want to throw suspicion his way by ordering a hit? By his dad being toppled from the throne, he now was king of his domain.

Besides, he’d already seen what had happened to his father, so it seemed highly unlikely he’d want to revisit that scenario.

Which left the younger son and daughter. We immediately discounted the boy.

A year following his father’s arrest and incarceration, Stefano Bianchi boarded a plane to Berlin, Germany. Armed with postgrad liberal arts and humanities scholarships, he enrolled at Humboldt University, host to some of the greatest innovators the world has ever seen.

We doubted Stefano intended to gain that kind of education so he could better extort or whack somebody.

That left the girl. And there the trail went as cold as it possibly could. The birth records Donnie and Becca managed to pull up listed her name DOB, mother and father, and the usual vitals.

And that was it. No highschool yearbook photos, no DMV, no college, no records of rental property. Aside from the birth certificate announcing the birth of this woman on August the fifteenth, 1990, Rosa Anita Bianchi didn’t seem to exist.

The question is how do you find someone who evidently doesn’t want to be found? The answer? You don’t. You force them to find you.

It was a risky gambit, but then most of us were used to living on the edge in situations like this. By the end of the first week of playing the waiting game, we decided to move things along.

Using the phone confiscated from the thug Roberto pounded into submission, we called the number the man had dialed. We weren’t surprised when it immediately went to voice mail. But being proper about telephone etiquette, we, of course, left a message to the effect that whoever we had just called could go screw themselves, and we were waiting for them.

Nothing like a polite message to get someone’s attention.

The following week, while Donnie Sullivan dutifully guarded his two charges, Victoria and Gorgie, the rest of us met up at the offices of Dark Sides.

“Where’s Cynthia Henry?”

“She told me she has to do interviews this morning at Alexander Investments. Evidently, she needs a new personal assistant. You remember Darla?”

“Darla Knowles?”

“Yeap, well, Darla’s husband got a new job in San Diego. They’re packing and moving this week.”

“Mom’s got a few candidates?”

“So, she says.”

“Roberto. Henry and Robert tell me you handled yourself pretty well in the field. You like it?”

“Oh yes, ma’am. I like it a lot.”

“The kids a natural, even out of the ring.”

“Yeah, Manny, I guess he is. Anything on the phone?”

“Not a word.”

“Think we should try again?”

“The message I left wasn’t enough?”

“It may have been enough, but it may have not been long enough.”

“What does that mean, Robert?”

“Well, this person has at their disposal the same caliber of super-geeks as Donnie and Becca. Remember Manny? They found Victoria’s maiden name on the marriage certificate filed in public records?”

“You’re right. I’d forgotten about that.”

“So, whoever they are, they need a little longer connection time to triangulate.”

“I can’t give them a longer connection time if the asshole never picks up.”

“Then we keep calling and leaving messages. I’ll have Donnie and Becca start tracing the calls from our end. Maybe they can at least determine the origin of the number we’re calling. Shaundrika, I’ve gotta go to the office and check on the spy twins. I’ll see you at home.”

“Okay, baby. Manny, you’re welcome to stick around here with Roberto, Henry, and me if you’d like.”

“Thanks, but I’d rather be with Victoria right now if you don’t mind. Robert, can you drop me off at Cynthia’s?”

“Sure.”

“Uh, Manny? Why don’t you leave that dude’s phone with Robert? That way, he can coordinate the calls to that number with the spy twins.”

“Good idea Henry. Here Robert catch.”

“Got it. Let’s go. Baby? See you at the house tonight.”

The three of us ambled down the hallway back to the bullpen and went back to our computers. It didn’t take very long for each of us to realize something just wasn’t right. We all flipped the screens of our laptops down at almost the same moment and stared at one another.

“It’s the woman, isn’t it?”

“Roberto, you read my mind. Something about this just ain’t right.”

“I can’t even believe I’m saying this, but I agree with you two. What would make anybody want to fall off the face of the earth and just disappear?”

“Maybe they didn’t want to just disappear. Maybe whoever it is suddenly just decided to become a ghost.”

“Why, Henry? Why would they do that?”

“I have no freaking clue, Sunny.”

Read On — When The Program Fails People Die Part XIII

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