Page 25 of Revenge & Ruin

I run my hands through my hair. “What about Leon?”

Martino grimaces. “Still out of town. We have someone stationed at JFK if he flies back in.”

That had been another monkey wrench in the works. Leon had just gotten up and left New York without warning, getting on a plane to Mississippi, of all places, but who knew if it was his destination or just a stop along the way.

I hit the escape key on my laptop a few more times than necessary.

That was the other thing. Something, orsomeone, was cutting me off at every turn. Usually, I’d have no problem unearthing Leon’s travel plans. Hacking and slashing had been my primary role as Rocco’s second.

But now…

I slam my laptop shut in frustration, refusing to believe that I’m getting rusty.

“There’s someone updating the Natali firewall on a nearly hourly basis,” I groan as I sit back in my office chair. “Every time I make any headway, I’m kicked out again.”

“Sounds like they know who they’re up against,” Dante comments mildly.

He’s sprawled on the couch in the corner of my office, chucking a baseball up in the air and catching it repeatedly.

It still feels strange to refer to this room as my office. Nestled within the very center of the Guild’s compound, the monochrome of cement and glass gave the space an almost futuristic look.

Before Rocco had become don, the only time I’d been invited inside was when we were teenagers, and I’d received punishment for petty misdemeanors I had done to share camaraderie with my friend.

When Rocco was don, my usual position was on the couch where Dante now sits. It's symbolic, perhaps, but I’ve yet to name a second, and having already pissed off Marco, Dante would be the obvious choice.

But such formalities can wait until I can get through a single day without wanting to hurl my computer at a wall.

“How do we bypass it?” Martino asks.

I wince a little. Whoever has been playing with the Natali firewall has purposefully been leaving files behind for me to read through. At first, I thought they were just being sloppy, but they’d outsmarted me too many times for this to be a mistake.

“They’re trying to lure me into trying to hack their local network.” I sigh.

Martino crosses his arms. “Like, go into their territory? Would that work?”

“Theoretically,” I concede. “But given how much they want to get me there, who’s to say there isn’t an insane amount of security on their local? It’s very likely a trap.”

Dante snatches the baseball out of the air. “Do we have any other leads?”

I grit my teeth. “Not currently.”

“But you’re like a wizard, right?” Martino tries. “Even if there’s a shit load of security, you’ll be able to bypass it?”

“Eventually, maybe. But it could take hours, and I don’t see how I could stick around long enough without getting caught.”

Dante hums. “What if you didn’t need to?”

I turn to look at him. “That’s not really?—”

“You only need to access the local server, right? As long as no one noticed, you could plug in a cloner and hack from afar.”

I weigh it in my mind. It’s a bit old-school, and the cloning devices I have on hand aren’t exactly discreet. I would need to be a pretty successful stealth operation.

Which means…

“Martino, go find Alessandro for me,” I say, rubbing my temples.

Dante echoes my frustration with a groan. “Are we sure we need him?”

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