Chapter 3 - Someone Knew Before We Did
The credentials belonged to Victor Hale.
Dante’s chief operating officer.
Fifty-six.
Married.
Two daughters.
Twenty-nine years with the Costa family.
Victor had taught Dante how to read a balance sheet when Dante was sixteen.
He had stood beside Dante at his father’s funeral.
When Dante inherited Costa Holdings at twenty-eight, Victor had been the executive who kept the legitimate companies from collapsing while rivals waited for the young heir to fail.
Dante read the name three times.
“No.”
I said nothing.
He looked at me.
“Victor wouldn’t.”
“His credentials did.”
“Then they were stolen.”
“Possibly.”
He hated that word now.
Possibly.
Maybe.
Evidence.
All the boring things standing between suspicion and revenge.
At seven, Victor called.
Perfect timing.
“Dante, I heard about Chicago.”
Dante put him on speaker without telling him.
Victor sounded concerned.
Too concerned?
I hated that suspicion changed ordinary voices.
“Sal said someone got onto the floor.”
“He’s recovering.”
“Thank God.”
Victor paused.
“Where are you going now?”
Dante looked at me.
I shook my head.
“Undecided.”
“You should get out of Illinois.”
“Why?”
“Mella territory.”
Interesting.
Chicago was not exclusively Mella territory.
Victor knew that.
Then:
“I can arrange Milwaukee.”
Dante’s eyes changed.
Milwaukee.
Our bait.
Victor continued.
“Costa Holdings has a relationship with the Pfister. I can get you the presidential suite.”
We had booked another hotel.
He should not know Milwaukee was relevant at all.
Dante said,
“I’ll consider it.”
They disconnected.
For ten seconds, Dante stared at the phone.
Then he threw it against the wall.
It shattered.
I flinched.
He immediately looked at me.
Not the phone.
Me.
“Sorry.”
That surprised me.
“You’re apologizing to me for breaking your own phone?”
“You hate loud noises.”
I had never told him that.
He knew anyway.
Four years worked both directions.
Dante walked to the window.
“Victor held me when my father died.”
I understood then.
This was not corporate betrayal.
It was family.
“His credentials could still be compromised.”
“You don’t believe that.”
“I believe we prove it.”
He laughed bitterly.
“You really are going to make me behave like a civilized person.”
“Temporarily.”
Sal returned at noon against medical advice.
Bandage behind his ear.
Terrible mood.
He wanted Dugan found.
Chicago police found him first.
At a train station.
Alive.
Terrified.
He surrendered immediately.
Dugan had not attacked Sal.
He had fled because someone threatened his younger sister.
He showed investigators the messages.
Photographs of her leaving work.
Her apartment.
Her car.
Instructions had come from an encrypted account.
Dugan was ordered to leave his security post at 1:20.
He obeyed.
The attacker entered through the service corridor minutes later.
“Who knew about your sister?” I asked.
Dugan swallowed.
“HR.”
Costa Holdings HR.
Victor oversaw corporate administration.
Not proof.
But another line.
Then Dugan said something else.
“The person messaging me knew Ms. Hayes had booked the Drake before I did.”
Again.
Me.
Someone had been watching my device or account in real time.
Cybersecurity inspected my tablet.
Clean.
Phone.
Clean.
Corporate account.
No unauthorized sessions.
Then a junior analyst noticed an old rule in my executive mailbox.
Every itinerary confirmation automatically forwarded to an archival address.
I had never created it.
The address looked legitimate:
[[email protected]](mailto:[email protected]).
But Costa Holdings did not own it.
One missing “s.”
costaholding.com.
A typo domain.
The rule had existed for fourteen months.
Every reservation I made.
Every itinerary.
Every hotel.
Every flight.
Every room preference.
Forwarded externally.
For fourteen months.
I felt violated in a way I could not explain.
Dante saw my face.
“Tessa.”
“They’ve been inside my work for more than a year.”
“You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“I should have caught it.”
“No.”
I looked at him.
He stepped closer.
“You manage forty-seven executives, three companies, my travel, half my legal correspondence, and every disaster I create before lunch.”
“That is not comforting.”
“It was intended to be.”
I almost laughed.
Then cybersecurity traced the domain purchase.
Paid through cryptocurrency.
Dead end.
But recovery email?
A corporate address.
Victor Hale’s assistant.
Caroline Webb.
Not Victor.
Caroline.
Thirty-four.
Eight years with Costa Holdings.
Quiet.
Efficient.
The woman who covered my desk when I was sick.
The woman who knew exactly how I worked because I had trained her.
Dante looked at me.
“You trust her?”
I hated the question.
“Yes.”
“Then now you know how I feel about Victor.”
That shut me up.
We did not arrest anyone.
We watched.
Caroline came to work as usual.
Victor attended meetings.
Neither knew we had found the forwarding rule.
Then our Detroit bait triggered.
Not Milwaukee.
Detroit.
Someone accessed the Detroit itinerary.
That itinerary had been created using Caroline’s administrative credentials.
Twenty minutes later, an unknown number messaged Dante:
Detroit changed the terms. Triple rate.
Caroline’s account was leaking too.
So either Caroline was involved—
Or someone was compromising multiple people.
Victor.
Caroline.
Maybe me.
A network.
At 4:30 p.m., I realized we were looking at the wrong thing.
“Access isn’t the common denominator.”
Dante looked up.
“What is?”
“Approvals.”
Every executive travel account required approval above a certain security tier.
Who approved Victor?
Board security.
Who approved Caroline?
Executive operations.
Who approved me?
Dante himself.
But the approval software had one administrator.
I opened the directory.
Name:
Elias Voss.
Chief Risk Officer.
Former federal cybersecurity consultant.
Hired eighteen months ago.
Four months before my forwarding rule appeared.
Dante stared.
“I barely know him.”
“That might be the point.”
Then Sal entered.
“We have a problem.”
He placed a photograph on the table.
Elias Voss.
Leaving a restaurant.
Beside him:
Vinnie Mella.
The man whose blood had darkened Dante’s cuff the night before.
Except Vinnie Mella was supposed to be in intensive care.
May you like
:max_bytes(150000):strip_icc():focal(1048x378:1050x380)/Jenna-Bush-Hager-100223-c94955eb572d47ea815a340c18c6e771.jpg)
And the photograph had been taken six weeks ago.
Before anyone claimed the Costa-Mella conflict had begun.
