8. DANTE
EIGHT
DANTE
One week. One week since I got rid of that aberration.
One week of a silence that, somehow, is louder than all the fucking noise.
My normal life drags on with routine meetings, territorial disputes, and the hunt for a rat still hiding in my shadows.
Everything falls back into place, except for the annoying absence of… that .
I leave my office, the smell of cigar still clinging to the velvet curtains, and walk down the main corridor. My footsteps echo on the polished marble, a familiar sound that usually brings me a sense of control. Today, it just echoes an emptiness.
As I pass the security room, I hear a nauseating cacophony.
A stupid—and irritatingly familiar—electronic beat repeats the same ridiculous phrase on loop.
I look inside. Marco, with a scowl, is punching a control panel, and Vinny, the youngest, has his hands on his head, exasperated.
Ruslan, as always, cleans his fingernails with a knife, completely oblivious to the chaos.
"What the fuck is that?" I say.
Marco turns, his face flushed with anger and frustration.
"This fucking sound system! It's stuck on this shitty song again!
I've restarted it ten times, but it always goes back to the same loop.
" He kicks the panel, which lets out a metallic clang.
"Even the surveillance computer isn't working right because of this noise. The south sector cameras are down."
Vinny groans. "I can't stand that duck voice anymore! Give me a sledgehammer, I'll fix this."
Ruslan, without looking up, murmurs, "Technical problems. Maybe the network has some kind of interference. Nothing a good reboot won't solve in a few hours." He shrugs. "Or a bullet through the speaker."
My jaw clenches. Interruptions. That's all I've had lately. "I don't care what the fuck it is. Talk to IT and get back to work. That shipment from the Newark port isn't going to clear itself."
Marco and Vinny nod, going back to messing with wires, while Ruslan gives a sideways smirk, putting away his knife. "Consider it done, boss. We're on it. IT will fix it."
I say nothing. They know it better be fixed soon—we already have enough problems with this infiltrating rat.
I turn to continue on my way. The sound of the stupid beat follows me to the car, pounding in my ears. A mere inconvenience. An irritating glitch. Nothing major. At least that's what I try to tell myself.
I head out to the underground parking garage.
This beat has already haunted my nightmares.
For the past week, my men's sound system has been particularly insistent on refusing to stop playing it, and for days now, that duck song has refused to leave my head.
I reach my armored Cadillac Escalade and get in, trying to put any other melody in place of that one.
The sound of the engine is one of the few things that still brings me some comfort.
The drive to the penthouse where Dmitry and Svetlana are waiting is short, but every red light feels like an eternity. I have important matters to resolve with my siblings. Matters that, suddenly, are becoming more complicated.
I arrive at the building, go up the private elevator, and, seconds later, the door opens directly into the living room.
Dmitry is already seated at the polished ebony table, his suit impeccable and his analytical gaze fixed on his tablet.
He barely landed from Rome yesterday, after weeks of closing deals in Eastern Europe.
Svetlana, more relaxed in a silk blazer, stands by the window, observing the Philadelphia skyline with her arms crossed.
"Finally, the crown prince deigns to appear," Dmitry says. He looks up from the tablet, and that clever glint he's always had is there. "I thought I'd have to send Luca to pick you up again."
I roll my eyes. "And I thought you'd pretend for longer that your business in Europe was more important than the mess you left here, Dima."
Svetlana turns from the window, her ice-green eyes fixed on us. "Stop it, both of you. I just got back from a hell of a flight, and the last thing I need is to hear you two bickering." She pulls the nearest chair back and sits down, sliding her tablet onto the glass top. "We have problems."
Dmitry adjusts his shirt collar. "Sveta's right, Dante.
Problems. And not the usual ones." He pushes the tablet towards me, the screen displaying a series of free-falling graphs.
"Our maritime shipments. Over the past five days, we've had inexplicable delays in Rotterdam and Hamburg.
Documentation lost in the customs system, misaddressed containers, and now, the New York port tracking system has started showing random glitches.
It seems someone is playing with our numbers. "
Svetlana continues for him, "And that's not all.
The latest report from the Atlantic City casino shows a discrepancy in payouts from some slot machines.
The number of errors in transferring funds to gamblers' accounts is growing.
Nothing big enough to cause panic, but enough to raise red flags for anyone who knows where to look. Almost like… warnings."
I frown. These aren't mere inconveniences. This is targeted. "What did IT say?"
Dmitry shrugs, and the smirk vanishes. "They say it's a series of bugs on the servers, maybe a new virus. But the intensity and frequency suggest something more. No one can identify the origin. It's like a ghost in the machine."
A ghost in the machine. Familiar phrase. "About that," Dmitry continues. "We do have a little virtual rat."
"Is it because of him?" Svetlana asks. "The one you're hunting internally."
"It would make sense," Dmitry says. "Such a… refined attack... with small interruptions, almost a game of patience. It doesn't look like traditional competition. They're more about breaking legs, not messing with Excel spreadsheets."
But no. It doesn't feel right to me. "The rat is responsible for our information breach to the Malakovs. A breach that until now went unnoticed. I don't see where the Malakovs would gain from this."
"Weakening your competitors is an advantage in itself," Svetlana says. "If the rat knows you've discovered him, it would make sense to make his attacks more aggressive. Only it would be foolish. Having a rat is only known by a very select group of people."
"And our security assets?" I ask. My voice comes out more controlled than my mind. "The new defenses we implemented after that incident with the Malakovs?"
Dmitry shakes his head. "Intact. That's what puzzles me. There are no signs of a major breach, of a direct attack. It's as if... someone is poking us with a toothpick just to annoy us."
My jaw clenches. Poking. Annoy .
This isn't a mere bug. This is personal. And that fucking idiotic music is still playing in my head.
I stare at the tablet screen, the free-falling graphs blurring red in my vision. That damned sound from the security room, the duck voice repeating the same meaningless phrase.
One week. One week without that aberration, and now everything seems… wrong. Too full of a noise that shouldn't be there.
Fuck. If it was him... It would be the worst humiliation of all. He drove me insane, made my body react in ways I didn't understand, and now he was hunting me with pranks ? That aberration, that trash , daring to provoke me even from a distance.
"Are you alright?" Dmitry says. That softened voice, coming from him, is very rare. I must be showing everything. I don't take my eyes off the tablet.
"Just tired," I say. "I can't stand that fucking music anymore."
Svetlana doesn't understand anything. She says, "What music?" and Dmitry suddenly slams his fist on the polished ebony. He says, with sorrowful animation, "You too?!"
My head spins. "What do you mean, 'you too'?"
"By God, Dante. I thought it was just me going crazy.
It started about three days ago. In the office, in the car.
.. Even on my headphones, in the middle of an important meeting.
The same hellish melody, the same phrase.
I almost fired the entire team for incompetence, thinking it was some inside joke of theirs. "
Svetlana looks at us genuinely confused. "What are you talking about? I haven't heard any music. I'm talking about the real problems. The casino numbers, the port delays... That's what matters."
I swallow hard. The coincidence is absurd. One week since I discarded Nyx, and now, this sonic plague spreads, infesting my life and Dmitry's. Svetlana is immune, of course. She doesn't have a sound system.
"It's not possible," I murmur, more to myself than to them. "It's just... coincidence."
Dmitry stares at me. "Since when do things simply happen in our world, Dante?"
His question hits home. Nyx . That perverse smirk, the way he seemed to want the pain, how he reveled in humiliation. He was chaos that delighted in messing up order. And what was this stupid music but an orchestrated mess?
"It's just a song," Svetlana says, already impatient. "Can we get back to the real problems? The delays at the Newark port have already cost more than any idiotic music. We have to find the source."
I close my eyes for a second, trying to push away the image of Nyx's face and the irritating melody. Svetlana is right. There are bigger problems. But the annoyance… the damned annoyance remains.
"All right," I say, opening my eyes and forcing my attention back to the tablet. "Let's focus on the real problems. Prepare a briefing for tomorrow, I need all the information you can gather about the origin of these bugs."
The meeting drags on for another hour, a bureaucratic torture punctuated by free-falling data and speculations about the source of the problems. On every new tablet screen, in every loss report, the duck voice and the irritating beat.
No, it can't be him. Not him. It's just fatigue. It's just stress.