43. Tatiana
Chapter forty-three
Tatiana
Aquiet noise tugs at my subconscious while I sleep a month later.
My tired mind wars with itself. Physically, I’m exhausted.
I’ve been working out until failure four times a day.
Mentally, I’m also exhausted from learning computers and cybersecurity.
At some point, every day, my brain has just given up and refuses to absorb any new information.
However, the flicker of pride I get when I recognize a technical word, and the sense of success I get when I pass an exam, can’t be matched. I never knew how rewarding doing something hard could be.
I also realized that I didn’t need to go to school to learn about art. Art was subjective. I could pick up any art history book and teach myself. But something like this? Computers and networks? That was actually useful. I should have been going to school for something like this.
I was getting stronger, too. My arms had definition when I looked at them in the mirror, and baby six-pack abs could be seen if I flexed and twisted a certain way.
I liked that look on me. Where a month ago a sad, lonely, tragic-looking bride had stood in the mirror, broken and hopeless, a woman stood there now.
She was tall, and proud, and looked like she could kick ass.
I liked who I was before marriage, before the cabin, before the boys.
But just as I never really knew them, or what love was, I had never given myself the time and space to really explore who I was.
I loved love. I loved Sparkles and Juliet and reading and watching movies.
I loved painting. But those are all things I loved.
Not who I was. The hours where my brain gave up learning, I was forced to stare at the ceiling and really give myself a hard look inside.
I’d been na?ve. And more than a little selfish. I’d been self-absorbed and let depression be a scapegoat for difficult emotions. I’d coasted through life without any challenges or adversity. I was more than a little privileged, and I took that privilege for granted.
I found that the woman I was becoming, though, was one I was starting to fall a little in love with.
She was determined, driven, and self-aware.
I knew how little I knew, and instead of living in that ignorance, I solved the problem.
If I had a question, I went down rabbit holes of information, becoming a mini-expert on everything I researched.
I downloaded self-help books on my phone.
Reading romance was a way of escaping before. Escaping family pressures, escaping my dating failures, and escaping the fact that I didn’t really like who I was on any meaningful level. I wasn’t escaping anymore. I wanted to get better. I wanted to be the best version of myself.
I learned about habits and routines, about assuming the identity of the person you want to be, even if you weren’t her yet. I learned about how to visualize what you want, and how to prepare for failure, so that when it inevitably comes, you’ve already come up with a workaround.
I learned about the history of the Russian communist revolution and trade routes. The history of America. I read about personal finance.
And when I read two things that contradicted each other, I made sure to sit with both ideas and work them out myself. Which felt more correct? Could there be an ulterior motive for saying the other thing? Who benefits by me thinking one way over another?
I think it’s called intuition or discernment. I’d never been taught either of those, but they were skills I could practice and get better at. I was learning to trust my inner voice. I liked that a lot.
But, it was exhausting.
So while both my body and mind wanted to fall back asleep and ignore the ping, a voice deeper in my chest urged me to wake up. I listened to her.
I rub my eyes. In my windowless room, I never knew what time it was without my phone. I lift it from my nightstand to read 2:13am.
I groan and rub the sleep out of my eyes, looking around nearly blindly for the source of the ding, or if I just imagined it in my sleep.
That’s when I notice my laptop screen. Something’s blinking on it.
I wipe my eyes again, my heart picking up a gallop - it knowing something before I do.
When my eyes finally focus, I’m able to read the flashing warning.
We’re in. We’re connected to the house Wi-Fi.
Fuck yeah!
Unable to contain my excitement, I throw my arm in the air and whoop.
I click the “Accept” button on the pop-out. Suddenly, a large window expands, and I realize I’m looking at Vitale’s desktop.
He has a tasteless background of a naked woman’s tits, cocaine spread in a line across the top of both breasts.
Ew.
Okay. That doesn’t matter.
I open the command center for his computer and do a search for “drugs”.
That’s stupid. But I guess I don’t know what I’m looking for.
What does the mafia even do? What would they call drugs?
Surely there’s a codename for them? I’m tempted to text Hannah or Nikki and ask, but it’s two AM. I don’t want to bother them.
Pulling the charger from the side of the laptop, I bring it into bed with me, placing it on my crossed legs.
Okay.
Think.
What do I know about Giovanni? He’s an alcoholic.
His dad was killed last year. He runs some sort of illegal operation, or a leg of it?
He ordered my assassination. But we never figured out why.
It seems like he’s more interested in snorting and fucking his way through life.
He’s gross. But he doesn’t give me criminal mastermind vibes.
My brain feels like it’s made out of scrambled eggs.
Giovanni’s out, so I sneak to the kitchen and make myself a pot of black coffee before running to my room and locking the door. Taking the first few bitter sips helps wake my brain up.
I drop to the floor and do pushups until failure to get my blood moving before pulling the laptop back into my lap.
Feeling more awake, I control+F again.
“Product”. Nothing.
I try “cocaine.” Nothing.
“Heroin.” Nothing.
“Fentanyl.”
A single deleted news article about an overdose downtown.
I stare at the screen.
Of course, it isn’t going to be that easy. The man isn’t going to keep a folder labeled ILLEGAL MAFIA CRIMES next to his tax returns.
I wish Lev were here.
He’d know what words to look for. Roman would understand the structure of Vitale’s organization. Mik would somehow glare at the computer until it confessed.
But they aren’t here.
And that’s the point.
I have to do this.
Okay, so if searching isn’t finding anything, I just need to look at everything until I find something worth giving to the FBI.
I open the file explorer and begin at the top.
Documents.
Downloads.
Pictures.
A folder containing photographs of several women stops me, but when I click through them, they seem to be consensual pictures from women he’s slept with. Selfies. Breasts. Asses. A few short videos I immediately close.
I don’t need to know that much about Vitale’s sex life.
There are tax records, invoices, legal correspondence, scanned identification documents, and dozens of spreadsheets.
I open the most recent spreadsheet.
It looks like inventory for one of his clubs.
Bottles, cleaning supplies, limes. Nothing unusual.
The first several hours give me nothing. There’s an accounting spreadsheet that I’ve saved that might be promising if I can translate some of the line items on it.
I find evidence of bribery, but we already know he bribes cops.
I find payroll records for people who almost certainly don’t exist.
I find invoices for meat, liquor, and cleaning services that cost ten times more than they should.
Money laundering.
At four in the morning, I find a folder labeled Fleet Maintenance.
Inside are service records for trucks belonging to three different businesses.
A meat distributor, a linen company, and a waste-removal service. Doesn’t exactly scream mafia activity. I almost close it, but then something catches my eye. The mileage listed doesn’t make sense.
One truck supposedly traveled more than six thousand miles in a week. Another received four oil changes in the same month. A third has fuel receipts from Maryland, New York, and Canada within a forty-eight-hour window.
I don’t know what it means yet, but I save a copy of it, too.
Then I keep looking.
At five-thirty, I find an encrypted folder hidden several layers deep inside what looks like tax filings. The name is a string of random numbers and letters, but it was accessed three days ago.
I click it, but a pop-up prompt for a password appears.
Shit.
I could use Axel’s password hacker, but I don’t want to wait another several weeks. Every day in this prison is too much. Vitale’s latest form of torture is fucking whatever woman he has against my door.
Not an ounce of me is jealous, but he wakes me up, and it feels violating. Like he’s proving a point that even though we’re married, he can do whatever he wants. I want out. Yesterday.
Then a thought occurs to me. Vitale is arrogant, and arrogant people think they’re smarter than everyone else.
I do a control+F for “passwords,” and sure enough, the idiot has a spreadsheet of his saved passwords.
Perfect. Sure enough, there’s an entry for this file.
Suddenly, it doesn’t feel so hopeless anymore.
I can feel I’m on the verge of something.
What? I don’t know. But he has so many other records not password-protected, so this must be important, right?
At first, I can’t understand what I’m seeing. There are several spreadsheets and folders assigned male first and last names. A dozen of them. I click into one of the folders as I open the spreadsheet. What I find makes my coffee almost come back up.
I push the laptop away as if I can distance myself from the evil I think I’ve just found.
“No...” I whisper, covering my mouth with my hand in horror. I take a few fortifying breaths before pulling my laptop back into my lap. I have to do this.