She’s doing exactly that. She’s creating a spectacle of business. Through the camera feed, I watch her pace the room, the office landline pressed to her ear, shouting orders to the crane operators and the fuel depot.
She’s generating the kind of noise that proves the Blackwood Empire is alive and kicking.
I want the Italians to hear it. I want them to see the trucks and the cranes. If we moved in silence, they would suspect a smuggling run. But doing it in the light? It passes for legitimate business. It's the best camouflage in the world.
She stops to rub her temples, the coiled phone cord stretching tight as she moves, tethering her to the desk. Her posture is rigid, like she’s holding herself together with sheer will.
She’s wearing the charcoal suit I forced her into, but she’s taken off the jacket. Her white blouse stands out against the dark leather of her father’s chair.
"The code is compiled, Boss," Ivan says from the corner of the room, spinning his chair around.
He has set up a temporary command station on the conference table. It’s three monitors and a mess of cables connected to the Blackwood mainframe.
He holds up my black industrial tablet.
"It took sixty minutes after her biometric signature for the algorithm to settle," Ivan explains, tapping the screen. "But it's done. The encryption key for the return shipment is generated."
I take the tablet.
"Secure?" I ask.
"Ironclad," Ivan promises. "This tablet is now the only key in the world that can unlock those weapons containers when they get back from Venezuela. Without it, that cargo is expensive scrap metal. You lose this tablet, and we lose the war."
"I won't lose it." I slide the tablet into the inner pocket of my jacket. It rests against my ribs, a hard, reassuring weight.
I look back at the screen. To the left of the video feed, a second window mirrors her desktop in real-time. I can see every mouse movement, every file she opens, every key she hits before she even presses enter.
Ivan’s spyware is invasive. There are no secrets in that room.
"She’s working," I say quietly, watching her cursor hover over a fuel requisition form. "She authorized the mining drills. Now she’s processing the port fees."
"She’s fast," Ivan notes. "Efficient. Most civilians would be vomiting in the bathroom after what she saw here."
"She’s a Blackwood," I murmur. "Resilience is the only inheritance her father didn't gamble away."
I find myself lingering on her image. I remember the way the wet cotton clung to her skin, the heat of her body, the fire in her eyes when she told me to go to hell.
She’s dangerous. Not because she’s strong, but because she’s desperate. And desperate people are unpredictable.
Suddenly, a sharp beep cuts through the office.
On the monitor, the feed of Helena's computer screen flickers. A line of static cuts across her desktop wallpaper.
"What’s that?" I demand, leaning closer.
Ivan frowns. He turns back to his keyboard, his fingers hovering. "Just a lag spike. The server is updating..."
He trails off. The static doesn't clear. Instead, the cursor on Helena's screen freezes.
"Ivan," I warn.
"I'm checking," he says, typing a command. "It’s weird. The firewall is showing green. No alerts. But the data stream is heavy."
"Heavy?"
"Something is pushing through," Ivan says, his voice tight. "It’s not a hack. A hack would trigger the alarms. This looks like a handshake."
"Explain," I bark.
