Chapter 20 Enzo #2
Elio rolled his eyes so hard Enzo thought they might stick. “Okay, so, at first glance, the thumb drive was a bust. Like, they framed your mom and were totally content to let her rot for the shady shit they’re actually doing.”
“Like?” Enzo pressed.
Ansel swallowed, reaching for bacon like he was at brunch instead of staging a courtroom defense. “Looked like your standard embezzlement scheme. Fake vendors, shell corps, offshore accounts. Blah blah blah. Any cybercrimes department worth their badge would stop there and call it solved.”
“But you didn’t?” Seven asked, leaning in, voice tight.
“Hell no,” Elio said with a smirk. “Our mom would murder us if we left your mom to rot in a prison cell like your pops.”
Seven froze.
When Enzo shot him a warning look, Elio shrugged. “What? Did he not know? The whole city knows now thanks to the tabloids.”
“He’s right,” Ansel mumbled around another bite. “They dropped a story on Neith just last night. Compared her to that German spy—what’s her name? Hari something? They’re making her sound like some kind of femme fatale who’s only with Uncle Rocco to get dirt for your dad.”
“Mata Hari?” Enzo supplied, pinching the bridge of his nose.
“Mata who?” Seven asked, blinking. Then his face crumpled. “Wait…they think my mom is spying for my dad? Do they think he convinced her to embezzle from a charity, too?”
“They implied it, but didn’t say it outright. Lots of allegedly sprinkled in for flavor,” Elio said.
“Can you explain,” Seven pressed tightly, “how any of this helps my mom?”
Elio spread his hands. “It totally doesn’t.
But here’s the thing. Whoever decided to dump these files onto the thumb drive to frame Neith either didn’t know what they were doing or panicked at the last second.
Because nobody—nobody—is dumb enough to dump their entire operation onto a single thumb drive. ”
Enzo set his fork down, appetite gone. “What did you find? Speak plainly.”
“Like I said, at first glance, it was junk. Fake vendors, fake entries, all roads leading back to Neith. We ran the usual programs any cybercrimes unit would run. Same conclusion: guilty as sin. Until…” He trailed off.
Enzo glared. “Are you pausing for dramatic effect? This isn’t the Oscars. Just say it.”
Ansel rolled his eyes. “God, you’re impatient. I was bored while Elio was chasing vendor transactions line by line, so I ran a deep scan. Didn’t expect much, but then I noticed something by accident.” He jabbed a finger at the papers.
Enzo flipped one over and froze. It wasn’t a budget sheet at all. It was a woman’s picture.
“What about it?”
“These image files were massive. Way bigger than they should’ve been. That usually means someone’s hiding data inside them. It’s called steganography.”
Seven blinked. “Oh, shit. Owen told me about this.”
Enzo’s eyes narrowed. “Did he?” The bitterness slipped out before he could stop it.
The table went silent. Then Seven smirked. “You know we can see you sulking, right?”
“And?” Enzo asked, folding his arms over his chest like a teenager.
Elio cackled. “And you look like you just smelled bad sushi.”
“I cannot believe how petty you are,” Ansel added.
Enzo scowled. “Can we just move on?”
“Can you?” Seven countered, smug. “You’re the one pouting because my boss—who specializes in cybercrimes—taught me something about cybercrimes.”
“Fine,” Enzo huffed. “What else did he teach you?”
Seven rolled his eyes, but his voice softened as he explained. “Basically, you can bury data inside a picture. Looks normal when you open it, but underneath, there’s code. Invisible ink for the digital age.”
Elio snapped his fingers. “Exactly. And these gala shots? They weren’t just happy little snapshots of donors and smiling women WERC supposedly helped. Inside the code were dossiers. Names, routes, even destination ports. Each donor was paired with one or more women from the program.”
Seven’s face went white. “What do you mean paired?”
Ansel’s grin dropped. He tapped the pages. “The files list who picked them up, where they were transported, and in some cases…who they were sold to.”
The room went quiet.
“Jesus Christ,” Enzo muttered.
Seven shoved his plate away, nausea written across his face. “I think I’m gonna puke.”
Elio winced, but pushed forward. “That’s not all.
The spreadsheets had hidden notes buried in random cells—tiny GPS coordinates.
They line up with warehouses near the rail yards.
And one of the donor voicemails? Not just a voicemail.
We cleaned it up. You can hear machinery, a train horn.
They’re running a trafficking hub right under WERC’s nose. ”
“So, my mom wasn’t stealing money,” Seven whispered, voice breaking. “She was digging too close to this.”
Elio nodded. “Exactly. They framed her to shut her up. And whoever’s behind it? Powerful enough to bury the trail, but not smart enough to cover it from me.” He smirked, then amended, “Well…us.”
Seven exhaled a shuddering breath. “We can’t take out an entire trafficking ring without permission from Thomas and Jericho.”
Enzo’s jaw clenched at Thomas’s name in Seven’s mouth, but he kept his temper leashed. “You said whoever did it was an idiot, right? How does someone that stupid run a trafficking ring?”
The twins exchanged a look. Finally, Elio shrugged. “My guess? Someone low on the ladder panicked. Dumped a bunch of files onto the thumb drive without realizing they included the real dirt. Maybe they thought padding it with harmless crap would make it look more legit.”
“Brioni,” Seven said at once. His voice was sharp enough to cut.
Enzo nodded grimly. “She’s been steering your mom in the wrong direction for months. Makes sense she’d frame her and then panic, dump everything she could find. Your mom suspected her.”
“Then this Brioni’s no criminal mastermind,” Ansel said. “She’s a lackey. Which means she’s protecting her boss.”
“What kind of sick fuck starts a charity with the sole purpose of trafficking vulnerable girls?” Seven asked.
“The worst kind,” Elio said darkly.
Enzo reached out, brushing a hand down Seven’s back. His brothers were brilliant—sometimes reckless, always too curious—but at their core, they were decent. Better men than he’d ever been. Pride and guilt twisted together in his chest.
“We’re gonna kill this guy, right?” Seven asked suddenly, eyes hard.
Elio choked on his coffee. “Wait—you really kill people? That wasn’t just a rumor?”
Seven shrugged. “Only the ones who need killing. The ones who’d walk if we left them to the courts. There’s a chain of command—Jericho, then Thomas makes the final call—but people like this? They deserve to die.”
Ansel’s bravado cracked. “Do you think the women are still alive?”
“I don’t know,” Seven admitted. His voice trembled, but his gaze was steady. “But I know someone who can find out.”
Enzo cocked his head. “Thomas’s hacker friend? Callista?”
“Calliope,” Ansel and Elio corrected in unison.
Seven blinked. “You know about Calliope?”
“Well…not really,” Ansel hedged. “Levi mentioned her a few times, but we thought he made her up. She sounded like some superhero character. Like Felicity Smoak or that chick from Criminal Minds. But she’s real?”
“Terrifyingly real,” Seven said.
“Can we meet her?” the twins asked together, eyes bright with childlike glee, like they’d just been promised a trip to Disneyland.
Seven cracked a faint smile, the first since they’d arrived. “I can ask.”
“Fuck yeah,” Elio muttered.
Seven didn’t respond, just chewed his bottom lip.
“In the meantime,” Enzo said, shifting his focus back to the stack of damning papers. “Get the thumb drive back to Lucky before the precinct notices they have a dupe.”
Ansel raised a brow. “And what are you two going to do? Aside from meeting the terrifyingly real Calliope?”
Enzo’s smile was sharp. Humorless. “We’re going to talk to the weakest link.”
Seven nodded, eyes glinting with steel. “Brioni.”