Aurelio studies me across the desk. The lamp throws deep shadows across his face, and suddenly he looks ancient. Not tired. Ancient. Like a man who has seen this exact scenario play out a hundred times across a hundred generations. He coughs and it takes him a moment to recover.
"You love her," he says. Not a question.
I don't answer. The word feels wrong in my mouth. Too small for what's happening inside my chest. Too clean for the mess it's made of my priorities.
"Leone." Aurelio leans forward. "I asked you a question."
"She matters to me."
"That's not what I asked."
I meet his eyes. "Yes."
He nods slowly. Settles back in his chair. "Then here are my terms. She stays in the compound. She continues her analysis.She reports to you, you report to me. Her safety is your responsibility, and if it compromises your ability to function as my right hand, I will remove her from the equation. Not permanently," he adds, catching the look on my face. "But decisively. Do we understand each other?"
"Yes, sir."
"One more thing." He stands, walks to the window, looks out at the compound. "If she's right about Apex Meridian, if someone has infiltrated our communications, then nothing we say in this building is safe. I want a full security audit. New encryption. Sweep every room, every phone, every terminal. Start tonight."
"Understood."
"And Leone?" He glances back at me. "Protect her. Not because she's yours. Because she might be the only person who can unravel this before it buries us."
I nod once and leave.
The security audit starts immediately.
I pull Claudio from his bunk and put him in charge of the physical sweep. Every room, every floor, every closet and crawlspace. He takes four men and a bag of detection equipment and disappears into the compound like a ghost. Emilio handles the digital side, pulling access logs from every terminal, every camera feed, every encrypted channel we operate on.
By 1 AM, they've found three compromised terminals. All in common areas. All with backdoor access installed at the firmware level, invisible to standard security scans. Whoever did this knew our systems inside and out.
"This isn't amateur work," Emilio says, showing me the code on a laptop screen. "This is professional. Corporate-level intrusion. Someone with serious resources and serious access."
"Apex Meridian builds security infrastructure," I say. "If they designed or consulted on any of our systems..."
Emilio's eyes widen. "Then they had root access from day one. They didn't need to hack us. We invited them in."
The realization sits in my stomach like lead. Every communication. Every strategy session. Every order I've given, every report I've filed, potentially visible to whoever sits behind that New York address. They've been watching us fight their war and ading the pieces in real time.
"Shut it all down," I say. "Every compromised terminal. Rip out the firmware. We go analog until we can rebuild from scratch."
"That'll take days."
"Then it takes days. Better deaf than exposed."
Emilio nods and disappears back into the server room. I stand in the corridor alone, rubbing my eyes, and let it settle.
We've been blind. Fighting a war we thought we understood, against an enemy we thought we'd identified, while the real threat sat in a New York office and watched us bleed each other dry. The Castillo’s aren't the enemy. They're the weapon. And the hand holding that weapon has been invisible until a woman with no training and no loyalty to anyone except herself sat down with a stack of financial documents and did what an entire intelligence operation couldn't.
Alexandra.
Everything comes back to her.
I check my watch. Almost 3 AM. She'll be asleep, or pretending to be, waiting for me to come back and update her on everything.
I start walking.
The corridors are dark. Most of the compound has gone to sleep, only skeleton crews and night guards remaining. My footsteps echo off concrete walls as I make my way back, and my mind is running three tracks simultaneously. The security audit. The Apex Meridian investigation. Alexandra.
