Chapter 5 - The Inside Man
The grandfather clock in the corner of the foyer ticked off the seconds with agonizing slowness.
Tick. Tick. Tick.
My gaze shifted past Clara’s shoulder down the long hallway toward the security alcove. Dominic was standing by the control room doors, his hand resting casually near his holster, watching us with the calm, professional vigilance he had maintained for the last six years.
Dominic had pulled me out of the burning wreckage of the SUV fourteen months ago. He had taken shrapnel in his shoulder saving my life. He was the only person I trusted with the combination to my primary vault.
“That’s an execution-level accusation,” I said, my voice dangerously quiet. “Dominic bled for me.”
“Dominic was the logistics coordinator for the Blackwood Group before he came to work for you,” Clara said, pulling a folded flash drive from the lining of her trench coat and holding it out toward me. “The Blackwood Group is the shell company Vance used to funnel the untracked capital for the West Coast terminal acquisitions. When I was with DOJ, I tracked the money trail. The signature authorizing the wire transfer for the explosives component used in your wife’s car didn't come from Vance’s corporate office. It came from an encrypted terminal registered to an IP address inside this estate.”
I stared at the small black drive in her palm.
“If Dominic wanted me dead,” I said, “he could have finished the job in the hospital. He could have poisoned Matteo’s IV anytime in the last year.”
“He doesn't want you dead, Vincent,” Clara said, stepping closer. “Dead men can’t manage sixty acres of prime real estate, and dead men can’t keep the shipping lanes open under your corporate umbrella. Vance needs your infrastructure, and Dominic is the inside man tasked with bleeding your terminals dry until your company goes into involuntary receivership.”
She pressed the drive into my hand. My fingers closed around the cold plastic.
“Put that into your console downstairs,” Clara said. “Run the encryption keys against your security logs from the night before the bombing. You’ll see the backdoor protocol Dominic installed in the perimeter firewall—the exact backdoor Vance’s team was trying to activate with that fake warrant today.”
I didn't move. My mind raced through a thousand memories—Dominic standing by my side at my wife’s funeral, Dominic holding Matteo’s wheelchair when the boy first came home from the hospital, Dominic taking a bullet fragment out of his own arm without flinching.
If Clara was lying, she was executing the most sophisticated psychological operation I had ever encountered.
If she was telling the truth, the enemy wasn't outside my gates anymore. He was sitting at the console twenty feet beneath our feet.
“Stay here,” I told Clara.
I turned and walked down the hallway toward the security alcove. Dominic looked up as I approached, his face an impassive mask of professional loyalty.
“Everything alright with the marshals, Mr. Rossi?” Dominic asked smoothly.
“They left,” I said, keeping my face neutral. “Dominic, I need you to run a diagnostic on the perimeter firewall. Vance tried to hit the western grid with a remote data packet during the standoff. I want every log from the last hour pulled and routed to my private terminal.”
Dominic didn't hesitate. He nodded, turning to his keyboard. “On it, sir. Give me two minutes.”
I stood behind him, my hand resting casually inside my jacket, my thumb brushing the cold steel of my Sig Sauer. Through the glass partition of the control room, I could see monitor four.
On the screen, Matteo was still sitting on the south terrace, wrapped in his wool blanket, watching the grey ocean waves crash against the rocks below. Alone.
Dominic’s fingers flew across the keyboard. Lines of green code cascaded down the secondary monitor.
“Got it,” Dominic said, leaning back slightly. “There’s an outbound data ping trying to route through port sixty-four. It looks like an automated trace back to an IP address registered in the Caymans—Vance’s primary holding company.”
He looked up at me, his eyes clear and steady.
May you like
“Do you want me to isolate the port and purge the router, Mr. Rossi?”
I stared at him, the weight of the flash drive burning in my pocket, realizing with sudden, chilling clarity that the trap wasn't just closing around Vance—it was closing around both of us.
