Gabriel taunts me with a quick raise of his eyebrows. “Believe it,viejo.”
I give him a skeptical look.
“Look into it yourself. You’ll see that I’m telling the truth.” The air around Gabriel is too poised for him to be telling stories.
If it’s true, that means we’ve been hacked, and we can’t let that continue. RHL Solutions is a legitimate security company with clients and everything; however, some of our clients aren’t on the right side of the law.
“We’ll look into it,” I agree with a small nod.
“I expect my system to be upgraded,” Gabriel demands, “and the product stolen to be replaced.”
“You can’t be serious,” Rory blurts with disbelief.
“I’m very serious,” Gabriel says with a hard tone. “I’d hate to have to be the one to takemybusiness somewhere else.”
My fists squeeze at my sides.
“Vamos!” Gabriel directs his men, and they follow him as he exits.
When we hear the heavy metal door shut with a thunk, Rory paces and rambles away. “Fuck. How could this happen? We’re not fresh out of college. Our systems and code are among the best. Who would be sophisticated enough to hack it?”
Luke approaches Rory with a look in his eye that I’ve seen many times before but never commented on and places his hand on Rory’s shoulder, stopping him in his tracks. Whatever that look was, it’s not my business. They can figure that out for themselves.
Luke doesn’t say anything and gives Rory a look. Seeing Luke, Rory takes a deep breath, deflating on his exhale.
Thinking through the problem logically, I rub my hand over my chin. “We should have seen this coming. The fact that we didn’t means we’ve become complacent.”
“So what’s the plan?” Rory asks.
“It’s one in the morning. We go home and get some sleep,” I answer.
They both nod in agreement, and we make our way to our car waiting just outside.
Luke and I head up to the penthouse when we get back into the city, but Rory directs the driver to take him to his favorite club. Luke hides the disappointment on his face from Rory, but I catch a glimpse of it.
I’m not going to get involved. There’s too much going on right now as it is.
This hacker poses a threat to us and our business, and I’m not going to stand by while someone fucks with my family.
Hot coffee spillsover the side of my cup as the brakes of the car squeal, and I’m almost thrown from my seat. Most of my caffeinated brew is now pooled in the black leather seat next to me.
“Shit,” I curse under my breath.
I knew I should’ve left the lid on, but I burned my tongue taking a sip and decided to let it cool down.
Bad idea.
No one should have to deal with me when I’m this tired. It’s not fair to my employees or anyone else. There’s no amount of money I could pay or any favor I could promise that would make dealing with me worth it, and today was going to be a long day in the office.
I had an executive meeting with the heads of each department, followed by another meeting with my Chief Security Officer, where I reviewed the upcoming quarterly reports, incident reports, and after-action reports.
Report. Meeting. Report. Meeting.
But that’s quite literally what I signed up for when starting this business.
A second screech, and the rest of my coffee is added to the puddle.
“Goddamit!”
