Chapter 9 - The Internal Leak
The private communications console in Damen’s downstairs study hummed with a low, blue light as he plugged an encrypted hard-line cable into his master terminal.
I stood behind him, watching the scrolling green lines of data cascade across the curved monitors. Downstairs, the dead bodies of the two Vanguard operatives had already been secured by Tomas and Marco, who were sweeping the perimeter for secondary teams.
"If the leak came from the federal side," Damen said, his fingers flying across the mechanical keyboard with blistering speed, "then the entire federal task force tracking my logistics network has been compromised by corporate espionage."
"Not just corporate espionage," I replied, leaning against the edge of the mahogany desk. "Look at the routing logs on the secondary firewall. Someone accessed the real estate deeds we signed in Maryland three years ago. They know about the safehouse, they know about my alias, and they know about the merger documents between the Giordano and Moretti families."
Damen’s fingers stopped dead over the keys.
He slowly turned his head to look at me, his eyes dark and shadowed. "Alessandra."
"Think about it," I urged, stepping closer. "She was humiliated in front of two hundred thousand people on a live stream when you dropped her arm and ran out of Harbor House to chase a pregnant waitress. Her father’s syndicate lost thirty million in development bonds because of you. She had the motive, she had the access, and she had the federal connections through her cousin in the district attorney’s office."
Damen stared at the screen for a long, silent moment. Then, a dark, dangerous smile touched the corner of his mouth—not a smile of amusement, but the look of a man who had just solved a deadly equation.
"She didn't just leak the location," Damen murmured, pulling up a secondary encryption log. "She set a trap for both of us. If the Vanguard operatives had succeeded in taking you, the Giordano family would have claimed you were a liability, forced a public execution, and seized control of my entire shipping infrastructure under emergency maritime law."
"And if you killed the operatives," I added, "the federal task force would have raided the estate on charges of harboring a fugitive and obstruction of justice."
May you like
"Checkmate either way," Damen said softly, standing up from the desk. He reached out, taking my hands in his. "Which means we're no longer playing defense."
---
