Chapter 2 - The Digital MirageThe east service-corridor footage continued to loop on my private terminal, skipping seamlessly over the six-minute gap where Victor had successfully compromised the digital feeds.
Gabriel returned to the dining room, his jacket damp from the relentless rain outside, his hand resting near the holster of his sidearm.
“The estate is completely sealed, boss. Every perimeter sensor is active, and the thermal drones are sweeping the grounds. But Victor isn’t on the property.”
“He vanished too fast,” I muttered, tracing the edge of the mahogany table. “Even with a head start, the biometric gates require a master keycode to override during a lockdown. Unless...”
“Unless he didn't override it,” Gabriel finished, his eyes narrowing. “Unless he had help from the inside long before tonight.”
“Run a deep trace on the network logs for the security mainframe,” I ordered, standing up and straightening my jacket. “Somebody didn't just delete six minutes of footage; they rewrote the system architecture to make the deletion look like a hardware glitch. That takes administrative credentials. My credentials.”
We walked down the long, dimly lit hallway toward the private security control center on the second floor. The rain beat a frantic rhythm against the reinforced glass windows, echoing the rising tension inside my chest.
Victor had managed my estate’s technological upgrades six months ago, claiming external hackers were probing our network. He had personally overseen the installation of the new servers, praising the state-of-the-art redundancy features. Now, looking at the blinking green lights of the server racks, I realized the brilliant redundancy was actually a backdoor.
Gabriel tapped rapidly at the main console, pulling up system logs, access timestamps, and encrypted packet transfers.
“Boss, look at this,” Gabriel said, pointing to a string of code scrolling down the monitor in a cascading green waterfall. “Someone initiated a remote data mirror at 8:12 tonight. Exactly when Sophia noted the clock clicking.”
“Where was it transmitting?”
“Not to an external IP address,” Gabriel said, his face pale under the fluorescent glare of the screens. “It was routing through a local relay inside the city. A secure fiber-optic node owned by Sterling Logistics.”
Sterling Logistics.
The name hit me like a physical blow. Sterling Logistics was the primary shipping front for the rival Calderon cartel—a syndicate we had crushed into the dirt five years ago. Or so I had thought.
“Victor didn't just turn rogue,” I whispered, the final puzzle pieces clicking into a terrifying alignment. “He was bought out. Three months ago. Right around the time my heart arrhythmia flared up and he insisted on managing my daily prescriptions personally.”
Gabriel cursed under his breath. “If the Calderons are backing him, they aren't just trying to assassinate you, Don Moretti. They’re executing a hostile takeover of the entire Moretti syndicate from the inside out. Without you at the helm, the capos will fracture within forty-eight hours.”
“Not if we strike first,” I said, my voice cutting through the hum of the server racks like a razor. “Gabriel, prep the armored suburban. We’re going for a midnight drive.”
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“Where to, boss?”
“To visit an old friend who thinks he’s already won.”
