Page 33 of Matteo

Nothing severe. Nothing that would be capable of bringing down a company of this size. More like a thousand papercuts than a knife wound.

But it bothers me all the same.

“We’re missing something. Have we reviewed every authentication log? Every permission change? Every system event?”

Alex folds his arms. He’s my second in command and the person responsible for the day-to-day monitoring of our systems.

“I’ve combed through them all weekend,” he says. “Nothing ties together. No common use. No common device. No obvious attack vector. It’s the same low-level noise we’ve been getting.”

“Noise that keeps happening,” Joel points out.

And that’s what worries me. “People don’t spend a month creating random inconveniences for fun.”

These incidents aren’t catastrophic, but they’re becoming more frequent. A month ago it was one or two strange events a week. Easy enough to dismiss as part of human error. Software bugs. Configuration drift.

Now we’re seeing something almost every day.

“We keep monitoring the logs,” I say, tapping my pen on the table. “Track every anomaly, no matter how small. Build timelines and look for patterns. Somewhere in all this noise is a signal and I want to know what it is.” I look up, surveying their expressions. “Don't look so defeated. We'll get to the bottom of this.”

“Yeah,” says Alex. “We're gonna get this. We're gonna fix it.” He's always upbeat. He can fix anything. The tech issues have had us all scratching our heads though. They’ve been minor so far, and we’ve mostly been busy upgrading a lot of the servers, so we haven’t been as focused on it, but now that the old man has hired someone to take care of it, I guess I’ll see how she gets on with it.

I need to tell them. I cough to clear my throat. “There's something else.”

All three pairs of eyes widen.

“Like what?” Sonny asks, a line creasing his forehead.

“We have a new starter.”

“Yeah?” Joel looks pleased. “You kept that quiet. When's he starting?”

“He's not. She is.”

“Wait, what? We're gonna have a woman working here?” Joel asks, his smile slowly widening.

I'd call it a dirty, sleazy smile, and it makes my gut twist. I want to wipe that smile right off his face. “We are.”

I'm now bombarded with questions, mainly from the two young ones, Joel and Sonny.

A woman?

How old is she?

Is she single?

I get up and walk to my desk. For no reason other than to still the way my stomach is churning. It's suddenly dawned on me, given their reaction, that Elizabeth is going to be the only woman working down here.

The only woman who has ever worked here, since I've been here.

Why did this not occur to me before?

“Guys. You can't be talking like that. We must be careful of sexist talk.”

“You've kept this very quiet,” Alex remarks. “I didn't even know we were hiring.”

“We weren't. I wasn't. My father is.” I straighten up and fold my arms. It still pisses me off. I have to watch what I say, because I don't need to tell them everything. They know, because they've heard me on the phone, or have heard my comments about him, that I don't see eye to eye with my old man.

He didn't tell me that he'd offered the role to Elizabeth until the last possible moment.