I’m hesitant to loop him in on my latest discovery, but from the looks of it, I’ll be doing him a favor. So I pick up my phone and shoot him a quick text.
I’m holed up in the office staring at two other computer monitors that won’t stop screaming red at me. “Cazzo,” I mutter, dragging a hand through my hair.
It started subtly enough. It was just a hiccup in the Gemini firewall, a lag in the Vault’s security feed, but it was enough to set off warning bells. When I came to check it out, I assumed it was just a glitch until I traced the source. Someone’s been pokingaround in our systems. Probing the weak spots. To me, it’s like a knife against my throat. Someone’s testing us. And if they can slip past me, they can slip past everyone.
It’s the kind of thing only a real hacker would notice. The kind of thing I should have noticed earlier. But I’ve been so damned preoccupied with my femme fatale I missed it.
“What now?” Ale’s voice cuts through the haze as he barrels into my office. He pushes the door shut with his shoulder and leans against the frame, all calm menace. The scarred side of his face is shadowed, unreadable.
I swivel toward him, jaw tight. “We’ve been breached.”
His eyes narrow. “Breached how?”
“Not all the way in. It’s more like knocking at the door or trying to pick the lock. But it’s deliberate. Coordinated. And not amateur shit either.” I point at the code scrolling across the middle screen. “See those signatures? They’re bouncing through proxy servers in Milan. South Brooklyn. Hell, even Marseille. But the base code?”
Ale shakes his head. “In English, Matty.”
“La Spada Nera,” I say flatly.
Ale’s jaw ticks, just once. The name is still a fresh wound for both of us. “I thought we handled that.”
“You handled it all right,” I remind him, spinning back to the screen. “You put a bullet in half their crew after Christmas. But maybe, just maybe, they didn’t take it well. Since they weren’t the ones who shot at you and Rory.”
The silence stretches. Ale doesn’t like being reminded that he made a call in the heat of blood that might come back to bite us all in the ass. He’d rather carry the weight himself than admit the fallout touches all of Gemini Corp.
Finally, he exhales through his nose. “So what do they want?”
“Revenge, maybe. Leverage, more likely. If they’re inside my system, they can see everything: shipments, payroll, hell, eventhe rosters for Vault security. They don’t need to storm the gates if they can make us blind from the inside.”
Ale comes closer, plants both hands on the desk, and stares at the scrolling data like he can muscle the code into submission. “How long until you shut it down?”
“I already did. But the thing about a hydra…” I tap the keyboard, pulling up another breach attempt. “Is that you cut off one head and two more grow back.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning they’ll be back. And next time, they won’t just scratch the surface.”
Ale mutters a curse under his breath, straightening. “So we tighten shit up. Let’s double the guards, again. We can rotate passwords. Sienna’s off tonight but I’ll speak to her in the morning. Maybe we can finally get some use out of her.”
“You think that’s wise? Your waitress isn’t exactly mole material.”
“She owes us for feeding her low-life boyfriend and La Spada Nera information last year.” He draws in a breath. “I’ll talk toPapàabout pulling resources from Gemini if that’s what it takes. With Rory pregnant now, everything’s changed.”
“Right… like you wouldn’t have gutted them before just for looking at her funny.”
A dark chuckle parts his lips. “Fuck yes, of course I would have. You’ll get it when it’s your turn, Matty. When it’s not just about protecting her body but protecting everything growing inside her too.”
I nod, but unease twists in my gut. Not just because Ale has no idea that I do know exactly what he’s talking about, but also because this doesn’t feel like just another enemy testing the fences. This feels targeted. Personal.
And for a split second, I can’t shake the thought that it’s all connected. What if I’ve really just lost my shit and this hasnothing to do with Cat? What if the masked blonde haunting me, the ladder that snapped under my weight, and the ghost I can’t bring myself to kill is all about La Spada Nera? They could be working with the Quinlans…
But I don’t say that to Ale. Not yet.
I just drag the tumbler of whiskey closer and take a big gulp, my reflection fractured in the dark screen. “Looks like the devil’s dance just got a hell of a lot more crowded.”
The elevator doors slide open on the thirty-seventh floor, and the hush of my luxurious Upper West Side building at just past midnight greets me like a punch. No pounding bass, no laughter, and no cousins bickering in half a dozen accents. Just silence.
I swipe my keycard and step into the apartment. Too big. Too polished. Floor-to-ceiling windows spill moonlight over sleek marble counters and cold leather furniture. From here, Central Park stretches like a dark ocean under the city glow, but even that doesn’t take the edge off.
