Chapter 17
GIANNI
She's on the phone when I notice her.
I'm leaning against the door frame with a coffee I haven't touched, pretending to review the quarterly projections sent over this morning, but I haven't read a single line.
That’s because Violet is on my floor, standing near the printer with a packet of documents in her hand. She's doing that thing she does when she's concentrating, tucking her hair behind her ear, chewing the corner of her lip, tilting her head at an angle that exposes the side of her neck.
I allow myself a small grin, knowing the marks I left on her, knowing she’s wearing a high-collared shirt today to cover them up.
My gaze drifts to her mouth. Specifically, I think about her lips wrapped around my cock during the eleven o'clock conference call with the Tokyo distributors.
I picture her on her knees on the carpet in the space underneath my desk.
Her mouth would be full of me, those gorgeous green eyes looking up at me over the rims of her glasses while I struggle to pay attention to the call.
I shift my weight against the door frame and adjust my stance. I need to think about something else—quarterly projections, union contracts, the grand jury—before my body makes this situation visible to every employee on the forty-second floor.
"Boss.” Spackman is five feet away with a manila folder in his hand and the expression he gets when he's about to tell me something I don't want to hear.
"Come in," I say. "Close the door."
He does, taking his usual seat across from my desk, setting down the folder between us but not opening it. "The Violet Wolfe file."
"What did you find?"
"Nothing."
I wait.
"That's the problem."
He opens the folder. Inside is a stack of printouts. He fans them across the desk and I let my eyes sweep over them. I see school transcripts, copies of leases, paycheck stubs, and more.
“Everything checks out. And I mean everything. She worked at a data services firm in Jersey before here. And before you ask, yeah, I called them. Had nothing but good things to say about our Violet. Before that, there’s an Associate’s degree from a community college in Pennsylvania.
3.9 GPA, if you’re wondering. Credit’s clean as a whistle.
Lease history is solid—no evictions, no bankruptcies.
And, as I’m sure you can guess by now, no criminal record. ”
"That sounds like a clean employee,” I say, a touch of wryness on my words.
"That sounds like a fabrication." He reaches forward and taps the stack with the tip of his index finger. "This isn’t how real identities look. People have speeding tickets—hell, parking tickets.”
“But there’s nothing of the sort. What about social media?”
“Nothing there either. You’d think there’d be old Facebook accounts, or a Spotify with her name on it.
Something. Violet has none of that. Every data point here is clean, looks exactly the way it should.
This is the kind of file that means she’s either been gunning for a job in the NSA since she was a teenager, or… ”
“Or Violet Wolfe is a fabrication.”
He nods. “There’s nothing here because someone wanted to make sure there was nothing here.”
"We’re talking about high-level identity fabrication. Violet is brilliant, no doubt. But this sort of thing isn’t her wheelhouse. She’d need to know someone with tech skills.”
"Someone with serious tech skills. This isn't a fake ID from some guy who makes them for college kids; this is a full-spectrum identity build. Whoever did this knows how to make a file that’s so airtight she could apply for a job at the FBI and it’d get through.”
I sit with that for a moment. My eyes flick over to the coffee mug on my desk. The coffee’s long been cold, but I take a sip anyway. I need a moment to think.
“Here’s my question—why would someone go to all the trouble of making a fake profile, only for it to have the mother of all red flags?”
“The red flag being that it’s so clean it looks fake,” he says, finishing my thought.
“That’s a good question. Maybe whoever made it did the calculus and figured that a clean profile would make things go smoother—employment and such.
And that’s not a bad call, really. We’re only really looking because she drew attention to herself. ”
"How long would something like this take to build?"
"Depends on the resources. A few weeks if you know what you're doing. A few days if you're exceptional. And this person, if I haven’t made that clear, is exceptional.”
I turn in my seat, looking out over the city. If this is indeed a fake identity, then Violet’s not working alone here. She’s got powerful friends.
"And the real identity underneath? Any traces of that?”
"Nope. That’s gone, buried. Whoever Violet Wolfe was before she became Violet Wolfe, she doesn't exist anymore. Not digitally, anyway."
“So she completely threw her old life away? Could she get it back?”
Spackman gives the question a moment of thought. “Maybe. Probably not. She’d have to have all her old documents, and her friend or friends or whoever did this would have to go back in and change everything. Her friend’s skilled, but undoing this kind of work would be risky.”
“She burned the boats.”
Spackman raises an eyebrow. “Sorry?”
“When the Spanish came to the Americas, they burned the boats so they couldn’t go back—only forward, for better or worse.”
He lets out a snort of amusement. “In that case, consider whoever Violet was before all of this is burned to a cinder.”
Outside my office, the floor is busy with the sounds of keyboards, phone calls, and the click of heels on hardwood. It’s an orchestra of which I’m the conductor, every note played to my design. But there’s one member of this orchestra who isn’t playing the music as written.
"There's another possibility," Spackman says. He lets the words hang in the air for a long moment before speaking. "She could be a plant."
He says it in a tone that’s even and straightforward. No emotion, more a professional assessment than an accusation.
"The timing fits," he continues. "She shows up right around the time the U.S. Attorney's office started building the RICO case. Her file is perfectly designed to pass any screening. She’s a vulnerable single mother with a secret, needing protection—perfect bait to get closer to you than anyone has in years. Not to mention the matter of the grand jury four weeks out.”
I don't respond. It makes sense, but I don’t want it to make sense.
“Any other theories?” I ask.
He shakes his head. “None so far. If you want my final verdict, it’s that she’s not who she says she is. Whether it’s because she wants to do you harm, or if she’s simply on the run, that’s up for debate. But we should make figuring it out a top priority.”
“Then we’ll do just that.”
I nod and Spackman understands the gesture as the sign the meeting’s over. He stands and leaves, closing the door behind him.
I look through the glass wall of my office. She's still at the printer, still chewing her lip as she reads whatever’s in the documents.
For the first time since I met her, I look at Violet Wolfe and I don't just see the woman I'm falling for.
I see a question I don't have the answer to.
And in my world, unanswered questions get people killed.