7. Teo
7
TEO
“ G ym, Starbucks, Fifth Avenue for no less than three hours, Prince’s Hand Harlem until the earlier hours. Back to her apartment, then to the gym again in the morning,” Martino reported.
As was Isabella Natali’s daily routine. It hadn’t varied an inch in the last week, with the exception of a trip to the salon and a dinner reservation with the wife of the previous governor of New York.
Nothing to incriminate her beyond her ties to the mafia, and certainly nothing that had so far led them to Ida Natali.
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, or someone , 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?”
I don’t bother replying.
The problem with Alessandro is that he’s almost too good at his job.
Which, in situations like attempting to infiltrate the Prince’s Hand undetected, are hugely beneficial.
Unfortunately, that means he’s also made himself indispensable, so when he says things like, “I don’t see why you didn’t put me on surveillance of the Natali broad. I’d have got you answers faster than she could have groaned my name,” I can’t kill him on the spot.
“Shut the hell up,” Dante snaps at him for me.
The three of us are parked outside the Prince’s Hand Casino. This particular branch is one of the only casinos that actually closes its doors in the early hours of the morning.
A steady trickle of staff and cleaning crew have been leaving the building for an hour now as we slowly wait for our opening.
“I’m just saying,” Alessandro grumbles to himself.
He had, unfortunately, already proved his value to the task at hand, unearthing the blueprints of the building seemingly out of nowhere and putting together at least a dozen escape routes in the span of an hour.
But that doesn’t mean I want him here at all.
“All right.” I nod toward the main entrance, where it seems a manager is locking the door and securing the metal grate in place. “You’re up, Alessandro.”
I don’t even hear him leave the car.
“We should get him a bell,” Dante comments, seemingly as unnerved as I am by his sudden disappearance.
“Don’t think that will help us tonight.”
I can just about make out a lone, dark figure darting into the building next to the casino before we go back to waiting with bated breath.
It can’t be more than five minutes when a single, flickering light appears in one of the windows on the upper floor of the casino.
Alessandro has dismantled the security.
Dante and I exit the car at the same time, striding with purpose around the side of the building where Alessandro has lowered the firescape for us to climb up.
Within seconds, we’re all crouched inside what seems to be some kind of admin office on the second floor.
Alessandro makes a couple of small gestures with his hands.
Guards are patrolling. Less than five, but heavily armed.
I nod. We’d anticipated as much.
It was tempting to just shove the cloning device into the first computer we could find, but it was clear the admin office was in near-constant use. Someone would surely find it here, making our mission obsolete.
No, with Alessandro’s schematics, we locate a computer within the office of what appears to be an in-house mechanic. I didn’t ask what Alessandro did to Mr. Jones to ensure he wouldn’t be coming into work for the next few days.
Getting to that office is the hard part.
I take the lead, crouching as I enter the hallway outside. Dante is at my back, and Alessandro is bringing up the rear. I have the route down to the basement partially memorized, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t relying on Alessandro as a backup.
Slowly, we creep through the building, avoiding the main floor at all costs. It helps that we aren’t targeting the casino or the vaults themselves. security in those areas is nearly impenetrable.
The only reason we’d managed to get this far was because the admin and janitorial areas weren’t as well-secured.
We move through the building silently until we reach the staff staircase that will lead us directly down to the mechanic’s office.
But as soon as Alessandro closes the door to the stairwell, we hear the sound of footsteps.
We stiffen instantly, pressing ourselves back against the wall as we strain to hear who is approaching.
Alessandro gestures with his hands again.
Two guards. Walking up the stairs. ETA thirty seconds.
I glance over at Dante, who is already cracking his neck.
Okay, then.
The sound of the two men murmuring to each other finally reaches us as I crouch low behind the banister. Peering over it, I can make out the top of their heads as they stride up, none the wiser.
Both are brandishing excessively large firearms.
I grimace to myself. If either of those guns goes off, our cover is completely blown.
I turn to gesture to the others to incapacitate them quickly, only to find Alessandro missing.
Mouthing to a confused-looking Dante, I say, “Where the hell is?—”
“UGH!”
We both dart to the banister to see Alessandro has already kicked one of the men down the stairs.
I don’t have time to watch as the guard tumbles head-first into the wall; my feet are already moving toward the fight.
The second guard, no longer surprised, is already pulling out a handgun from his belt.
I manage to reach them just as he begins to aim it at Alessandro’s head. The heel of my boot collides with his wrist with a sickening crunch.
The guard grunts in pain, but it’s not enough to knock him entirely off balance.
Luckily, Alessandro is immediately there to retaliate, throwing himself at the guard with a flurry of precise blows. I have to back down the stairs to avoid being punched in the face.
It’s a mistake I only realize is a mistake after something grabs at my ankle and yanks hard. I tumble forward, only managing to catch myself on the banister at the last second.
The split second it takes me to right myself is all the time the other guard needs to get the upper hand. He grabs hold of me and lurches forward, pushing me over the edge of the banister.
We’re only on the second floor, but the flight down two stories would likely fracture a few bones. Needless to say, I cling to the banister for dear life.
My attacker won’t have any of it. His relentless pushing is now accompanied by blows to the chest that threaten to wind me if I don’t do something soon.
Thinking fast, I grab hold of him with one hand, readjusting my grip with the other.
Then, suddenly, I remove all the resistance. I let myself be pushed over the side, dragging my attacker along with me.
It seems to happen in slow motion. His eyes are wide and wild as he realizes I’m taking him down with me.
For a moment, we’re in freefall. Then my other arm goes taunt as I cling to the metal bar above me.
I go to release him, to let him fall to his miserable fate. But the bastard clocks what I’m doing and clings to the arm that’s holding him.
“Let go,” I growl, my arm straining with the effort to keep us both up.
But he ignores me, holding on to me as if his life depends on it.
With a heaving groan, I kick him in the face. The first one lands just shy of his ear. But the second hit him square in the mouth.
It’s enough for his grip to loosen.
With one final kick, I manage to wriggle my arm free of his grip.
The guard falls unceremoniously to the basement floor. Despite my protesting arm, I spare him a look, wincing as I see him splayed out on the bottom step, blood oozing from his head.
That’s much worse than a fracture.
But I don’t have long to think about it. My fingers, now clammy on the metal bar, lock of their own accord.
In a fit of panic, I launch myself up, desperate to cling onto the banister with my other arm. But the movement dislodges me. My good hand flies up to try and grab hold of something, but it never quite finds purchase.
An awful, sinking feeling immediately sets in. I’m going to fall.
“Oh no, you don’t!” Dante is suddenly there, hand wrapped around my forearm, stopping my descent with a sudden, jerking motion.
I almost sigh in relief as he hurls me back over and onto stable ground.
Before me, Alessandro is standing over the other guard. Alessandro’s hands are almost as bloodied as the poor fucker’s face.
“I told you to wait for my signal,” I snap at him before giving Dante an appreciative slap on the back.
Alessandro turns to me, wildness dancing behind his wretched eyes. “There was an opening. I just took it.”
I want to dress him down then and there, but the likelihood that someone heard the altercation is too high. “Let’s just get this over with.”
The three of us descend the stairwell to the basement, tactfully stepping over the body on the bottom step, and slip out into the hallway.
The office itself is only a few doors down, and we find ourselves pushing our way inside without any further setbacks.
It’s dark, but I waste no time going over to the desk and sitting myself down behind a somewhat dated monitor.
I’m too distracted to notice the pulsing red light of the camera in the corner.
“Well, well, well. What do we have here?”
I freeze in place as a familiar, sultry voice suddenly crackles into the room through the AV system.
Isabella Natali chuckles in response. “I thought you were smarter than this, Teo.”