17. LEO #2
"Leonel," Svetlana says. "I apologize for entering without knocking at this hour, but the time you requested has expired."
Polite, but her voice makes it clear that if I have nothing to deliver, I'll lose a limb.
I turn in the chair to face them. Svetlana has her arms crossed, the personification of corporate frustration. Dante is right behind her, his eyes fixed on me.
I smile. "Oh, you're going to like this."
I spin the chair back to the computer. I open the massive text file—our intercepted Moby Dick.
"Here's your little rat's message."
They exchange glances. Too much text. Svetlana takes out round glasses, dangling from a metallic chain at the ends of the frame, and fits them onto the bridge of her nose. She leans closer, and Dante watches, maintaining his distance—a silent wall exuding strength and impatience.
Svetlana's impassive face contorts. She frowns and purses her lips. "What the hell is this?" She murmurs.
"What you intercepted were fragments of Moby Dick. Have you read it?"
Svetlana shakes her head. "Moby Dick?" She repeats, incredulous. "Did you find anything in the middle? A… message, an acronym, a name…"
"Just good old Moby Dick." I smile at her.
I feel Dante's irritation radiating from him. He takes a step closer, narrowing his eyes at the screen.
"This is idiotic," he growls.
"Did you check everything?" Svetlana turns her face to me, holding the temple arm of her glasses.
"I ran some scripts that checked—they're direct inserts.
Compared with the original book file, there's no difference.
I looked in the metadata, possible hidden images…
All the information was intercepted—the IDs have no missing numbers, so, in the end, all the rat wanted was to share a little literature. "
Svetlana's face hardens. She looks like a woman who optimizes every second of her life, and the idea of having her resources wasted on a literary joke is surely a personal insult.
"Don't come at me with literature , Leonel," she says. The polite facade transfigures into the glacier of her impatience. "This is an insult. If there's nothing in the text and nothing in the metadata, it means you failed. What did you miss?"
Dante growls behind her. Just that nickname, "Nyx." Just a warning.
As much as I like the idea of him taking all this frustration out on me, I raise a hand to him, pretending not to see Svetlana's confusion as I address Dante instead of her.
"No, this is the message," I say. "I can explain all the checks and run them in front of you if you wish, mister."
Dante gives me a short nod, the only permission I need. Svetlana, for a moment, ceases to be the client and becomes an irritated spectator.
I turn to my terminal.
"AES-256 encryption is solid, the math is almost unbreakable by brute force, but the implementation here was lazy. They used a timestamp as a base for key generation with the MAC address of the source machine."
I pull up another window in the terminal, showing the lines of my script and running it. I retrace my steps.
"The script tested combinations of timestamp and possible MACs, forged the key, and deciphered the fragments—Moby Dick, so the hypothesis shifted to steganography.
I ran a diff against the original book text, no alterations, no homoglyphs; I did a forensic analysis, checked the least significant bits, extended metadata, slack space of the files, and nothing.
The data distribution graph is completely flat. "
I turn to them again—to him . There's a fascination he barely conceals. He understood enough. He understood that I dismantled the problem in minutes just as he ordered.
"The message is the absence of message," I say, without taking my eyes off him.
I see Svetlana straighten in my peripheral vision. She smooths her blazer, resuming an impassive mask and taking a deep breath.
"For what? To buy time?" She says.
"To buy time," I repeat.
She shakes her head. "Why?"
I lean back in the chair. Reasons.
"I have some hunches," I say, peeking at Dante again, waiting for him to show any sign of approval beyond a morbid fascination.
"Considering this transmission indeed comes from the rat: if he's infiltrated, he has data from at least some of your operations.
I bet this interception would cripple your entire IT for a few days—and I imagine that was the gamble.
But this only makes sense if your team is also actively looking for the rat, because disrupting the process only means they stepped too close to the hideout. Are they?"
Svetlana's face hardens. She stops being an executive to truly look like Dante Volkov's sister.
"No," she says.
I smile. This is fun.
"So he knows I'm here, and probably has access to the progress of my work. Too bad he thought Moby Dick would take me more than an hour." I turn to Svetlana. "The rat is one of the next on your list."
The sound that comes out of her is more growl than word, as she pinches the bridge of her nose and closes her eyes.
She makes a pause—some time for the anger to go down to manageable levels.
She wants to throw someone down the stairs, but needs my brain attached to a functioning body to keep their corporate game alive.
She takes off her glasses, and when she opens her eyes again, she's perfectly composed.
"It seems you were worth it, Leonel," she says. "But the question remains—you don't know who they are."
"Oh, but I will."
I spin the chair back to the keyboard. I retrieve Svetlana's list of targets.
"There are ten names left," I say. "They will be on that list. What's the time frame?"
Svetlana, now back in her crisis manager element, responds immediately. "As fast as possible."
I nod, already turning back to the keyboard. My mind traces the paths, the vulnerabilities of the next ten targets. If I had to guess, I'd say the rat's among the next five—close enough to provoke them into sending a useless message to trip us up.
I hover my fingers over the keyboard, cracking my knuckles before starting. The instant I press the first key, I feel a pressure.
A large, heavy hand settles on my shoulder, pinning me in place. The scent of Dante—tobacco, whiskey, and adrenaline—makes me shiver, and my head suddenly empties.
"I don't recall giving you permission to continue," he says in a low growl. The vibration of his voice travels down my spine. I sigh. I want his hand to move to other places .
"Dante, we need this fast," I hear Svetlana, but her voice is distant now. I only feel Dante.
"The question wasn't for you," he cuts her off, without even looking at her. Her anger bubbles. All his attention is on me. "I gave you an order, Leonel."
I hold my breath. I bite my own tongue not to externalize it, not to let on how much Dante turns me on.
He leans over me, slowly, and a woody trail of his cologne invades all my senses.
Tobacco, cologne, whiskey—maybe a hint of leather.
He presses the button on the back of the monitor and turns off the screen.
Click .
The sound ends the discussion. The screen is now a black rectangle, with an indicating yellow light— hibernating .
I have to brace myself in the chair not to stop Dante from moving away. I want him like this, so close that I can trace the most insignificant hints of his scent—a note of gunpowder, a note of soap.
"What the fuck are you doing?" Svetlana says. She sounds impatient, more than she should be. It's not the first time Dante has gotten on her nerves in a short span of time.
Dante straightens, but doesn't remove his hand from my shoulder. I wish he would squeeze hard. That he would slide his hand under my clothes.
"Asset management, Svetlana," he says. "He's no good to us with his brain fried by exhaustion. He'll do as I commanded."
He presses my shoulders in a silent order. Stand up.
I obey. Anything he wants.
Dante gives me a slight nod toward the door. The order is clear.
I obey.
When I pass Svetlana, I feel her icy gaze. She's furious.
The door closes behind me, and I'm left in the hallway with Luca, who is always profoundly uncomfortable being alone with me.
He gestures for me to follow him. Dante should have given the order in advance— eat and sleep , like a little pet. We walk in silence through the corridors, and from a distance, I can hear the muffled sound of raised voices coming from the office.
We arrive at an impeccably clean industrial kitchen, large enough to serve a battalion. Two cooks are dozing.
Luca clears his throat. The first one jolts awake, slaps the second, and both are standing with their faces creased from sleep and their spines straight.
"Yes, sir," one of them says. I have the impression he almost salutes. It would make sense. Luca has the best posture among all the enforcers I've seen, and he was only slightly less broad than Dante—he must have a military background.
"Prepare something for him," Luca orders. "Real food. The boss will check."
The cooks nod, terrified, and begin to move with a nervous efficiency. They don't question anything. They can't.
I sit on a high stool near a stainless steel counter.
The sound of the distant argument is still audible. They must be cursing at each other. Dante demanding control, and Svetlana demanding results.
Luca remains standing near the door. He's a guard made of stone and suit, always awake and available—a little robot at the Volkovs' command.
I yawn. Without any stimulus, my body feels heavy. I focus on the distant ticks of a clock, the metallic noises of the cooks, and the hum of the family quarrel. Something shatters on the floor. Dante is the type to break things against the wall. Or is it Svetlana?
"Do they fight a lot?" I ask.
Luca stares at me. He shows no reaction to the hum. Yes, they definitely fight a lot. "The Volkovs are passionate."