Page 59 of Code Name: Admiral

We got ready for bed together, moving around each other with a familiarity that felt both new and completely natural. When she curled against my side, her head on my chest, I felt at peace like I only did with her.

“What did Grit want?” she asked sleepily.

As close as I felt to her right now, that I hadn’t shared my conversation with him filled me with regret. I told her everything, knowing I couldn’t—wouldn’t—keep secrets from her. She listened quietly, her fingers tracing patterns on my chest. The other thing I told her was that, according to Tank, Vincent Castellano had gone dark.

“Interesting,” she muttered. “So, do you believe Grit? About Sweeney?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted. “One minute, I do. The next, I think he’s the mole.”

She propped herself up on an elbow, looking at me in the darkness. “We’ll figure it out. Together.”

I pulled her closer, pressing a kiss to her forehead. Whatever tomorrow brought—whether it was Castellano’s men, corrupt FBI agents, or both—we’d deal with it, side by side.

As I drifted off to sleep with Alice in my arms, I realized something profound: I was no longer just fighting for justice or truth. I was fighting for us. For the future we could have oncethis was all over. A future I intended to make damn sure we lived to see.

Outside, snow began to fall, covering tracks and erasing signs of movement around the property. In the boathouse, K19 operators monitored communications and sensor feeds. Somewhere in the city, the Castellano brothers circled each other like wolves. And in the dark halls of Federal Plaza, someone was setting forces in motion that would test us all.

But for now, at this moment, with Alice’s steady breathing and the repeated cry of a loon across the lake, I allowed myself to hope. Tomorrow would bring its own battles. Tonight was ours.

19

ALICE

Itried to go back to sleep when I woke before dawn, but my mind wouldn’t stop churning. Pershing’s steady breathing beside me was both comfort and temptation. Part of me wanted to stay curled against him, safe in our shared space, but Vincent Castellano’s sudden disappearance nagged at me. When a person went dark, it meant one of two things: either they were hiding, or they wanted people to think they were. Then again, a third option was that he wasn’t hiding at all. He was dead, and whoever had killed him didn’t want his death discovered yet.

After gently extracting myself from Pershing’s arms, I pulled one of his sweaters on that I’d found draped over a chair. It hung almost to my knees and smelled like him. Sure, it kept me warm, but wearing it made me feel connected to him even when I was about to get lost in my own little digital world.

I settled at my workstation, feeling more at home, more comfortable, more like I fit here in a way I never had in my apartment in the city.

“Focus,” I muttered, holding the piece of clear quartz while I ran my morning system checks. They’d just completed when my computer pinged with an alert. Someone was using high-level encryption protocols to move large sums through a series of shell companies.

“Get the hell out,” I muttered when the tracking code immediately traced the money directly to accounts held by Alessandro Castellano. But something was off. The paths were too clean, too easy to follow.

I reached for my Matcha and sighed, remembering I’d gotten straight to work without making it. I couldn’t take a break now, though. I opened another window to start a deeper trace, using a new algorithm I’d designed to identify patterns in seemingly random data—the digital equivalent of finding a needle in a haystack by analyzing the way the hay was stacked.

“What the fuck?” I muttered when the routing information revealed an encrypted communication thread between none other than Drake Harrison—aka Grit—and Alessandro. This was way too convenient, and more, far too perfectly aligned.

I sat back, rubbing my eyes. The evidence screamed that Grit was the mole—meticulous financial trails, communication patterns, precise timing. But that perfection was exactly what bothered me. In my years exposing corporate corruption, I’d learned that genuine evidence had rough edges. People made mistakes, left gaps, covered their tracks clumsily. This felt manufactured, like someone had created an idealized template of what exposing Grit should look like.

However, once I dug deeper, cross-referencing the communication signatures with verified Castellano operations, discrepancies were revealed. The encryption methods matched those used in the FBI leaks, but the implementation differed subtly—as if someone had copied the style without grasping the underlying architecture.

Remembering what Pershing had said about Vincent Castellano’s disappearance, I switched gears, wondering if the chaos I’d created in their world resulted in the brothers turningagainst each other. What I found when I peeked surprised me. Someone else was feeding Alessandro information that was worse than what I’d planted. “Very interesting,” I muttered to myself.

“You’re up early.”

Pershing’s voice made me jump before his hands settled on my shoulders, melting away the tension I always carried in them.

“Couldn’t sleep,” I said. “Too many loose ends.”

“What have you found?”

I needed more time to analyze what felt like artificial perfection before I shared the evidence against Grit with Pershing, so I took a different tack.

“Alessandro Castellano’s operations show increased chatter. His people are mobilizing for something.”

“And Vincent?”

“Still invisible. But here’s the interesting part—someone fed information to Alessandro’s crew about his brother’s movements before he vanished. Almost like they’re orchestrating conflict between them.”

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