“When?” Cillian asks.
Luis’s eyes grow watery and his mouth trembles.
“When?” Cillian repeats.
“Forty-eight hours,” Luis whispers. “Another run is scheduled.”
Cillian doesn’t hesitate. “Roarke?” he calls.
Roarke steps in.
“Contact Madrid Port Authority,” Cillian says. “Flag Torres & Vale for unauthorized code generation. Quietly. Simultaneously, notify Lisbon customs. We intercept the next shipment and seize the container publicly.”
Roarke nods once and steps back outside.
Luis exhales like he’s just survived something.
Cillian steps closer to the desk.
“If this works,” he says calmly, “Vigo is clean.”
Luis nods. “Vigo was just access.”
Cillian looks at me. “This ends because you caught it,” he says.
That almost makes me blush. It isn’t often that I’m praised for my work. “It ends because the system mattered.”
He studies my face like he’s trying to read what sits behind it.
Inside, something else is unfolding.
Iknowthis wasn’t a random case of corruption. This was structured enough to be impressive, precise enough to challenge him, clean enough to pass inspection.
My father likes operations that test men. He likes setting traps that require solving. If this corridor collapses cleanly and Cillian trusts me more because of it, that serves someone very well.
But I don’t let that thought reach my face. Out loud, the story is simple.
A Spanish consultancy cloned IDs, and a corrupt clerk facilitated it. He won’t have any trouble crushing it.
Cillian turns to the door. “Come,” he says.
I follow him out without looking back at Luis. The night air hits cool against my face, and Roarke is already on the phone, voice clipped while he walks toward his car. “Madrid’s alerted,” he says as we approach. “Lisbon too. Torres & Vale servers are being flagged.”
Cillian nods once. “Lock Vigo access immediately.”
“It’s done.”
We get back into the car, and this time, the drive feels different. The urgency is still there, but it’s focused on closing this loop. “You knew it wasn’t the physical load,” Cillian says without looking at me.
“I suspected,” I answer. “Your yard runs too tightly for six contaminated runs to pass unnoticed.”
He glances at me briefly. “You trust my system.”
“I trust patterns,” I reply.
He huffs something close to a laugh, then his jaw sets again as the phone buzzes in his hand. He answers on speaker.
“Talk.”
