Chapter 35 #2
“I am.” He looks sheepish. Another new thing. There’s never, ever, been anything sheepish about Vlad. Valentina waves him over.
He turns to us. “Please, enjoy yourselves. We will talk later.”
Matteo and I are left alone in a scene that is glamorous, gorgeous and breathtakingly beautiful. Only, every cell in my body vibrates with unease.
“Mala?” Matteo asks. “What is that?”
“It means little one.”
“Little one?”
“I told you, he’s always looked out for me.”
“You haven’t really told me anything.” He looks past me, and I follow his gaze to where Takumi is standing.
My heart sinks.
Around him are other familiar faces. People from my past. From another version of me. The more people I recognize, the more trapped I feel. It seems impossible to keep my past contained when it’s standing only a few feet away.
I should never have come here with Matteo. It’s a suicide mission, but I want us to enjoy this evening. We've had so little time together that hasn't been interrupted by misunderstandings, work, or our own stubbornness. I step closer. “Matteo—”
But he's already heading toward Takumi, and panic darts through my chest as I follow him.
Then something unexpected happens.
Nobody talks about the past.
Takumi greets me with a hug again, and the others welcome me back as though no time has passed at all.
The conversation quickly shifts to Vlad, his upcoming wedding, and the fact that none of us can quite believe he's finally getting married.
Everyone has stories about the groom, opinions on the ceremony, and theories about how Valentina managed to tame him.
I wait for Matteo to start digging. To ask questions and to connect the dots.
Remarkably, he doesn't.
Instead, he listens politely, occasionally joining the conversation, never once trying to pry into parts of my life I've chosen not to share.
The knots in my stomach loosen a little.
As the evening wears on, we eat grilled fish and roasted vegetables, drink wine, and mingle beneath the lanterns strung between the trees. We even manage to dance. I spend time talking to Valentina, who is every bit as warm as she seems. I catch up with Vlad between his duties as host.
Before I know it, the sky has turned inky dark, the crowd has thinned, and the evening ends earlier than I'd feared.
The evening surprised me, in a good way.
***
MATTEO
We danced, and ate, and drank.
After a few beers and in that setting, my mood lifted slightly. It was impossible not to enjoy the evening with everyone talking and laughing around us. It seemed as if only Elizabeth and I were the quiet ones. Every time I looked at her face, my heart ached, because I hate it when she looks sad.
But none of this was my doing. The secrets and lies, they seem to follow us everywhere. I've already decided that after tomorrow, after the wedding, I'll go and see Mama.
Vlad seems nice enough, and these people seem pleasant, but it's the secrets I can't handle, and Elizabeth's reluctance to offer the slightest bit of information troubles me.
We get back to our suite, when my phone rings. I answer it immediately when I see who it is. “Alex?” I need to take this in private, away from Elizabeth.
“Sorry to disturb you, but this is urgent.” His tone is off. He lowers his voice to a whisper. “Can you talk, alone?”
“Give me a minute.” We've barely stepped inside when I step back out of the room, not bothering to offer Elizabeth an explanation. I take the stairs and head down to the lobby, where I find a quiet corner and call him back, heart racing.
“What did you find about Vukovi??” I pace around. It’s late, and I’m the only guest here. A receptionist sits at her desk out of earshot.
“Who?”
“Vlad. Vladimir Vukovi?.” I assume that’s the reason he's calling me. Yesterday, when I left Elizabeth in the room, I needed time to myself to collect my thoughts, but I also needed Alex to do something for me. I needed him to look into Vlad.
“Oh, right, yeah, so ...uh ... this guy originally lived in the States. About five years ago he got caught up in a cybercrime investigation.”
I knew something was shady about him. I felt it in the pit of my stomach. “Go on.”
“He wasn't some basement-dwelling script kid. According to the records, he was considered one of the organizers of a group that illegally accessed a corporation's systems. The feds painted him as the strategist.”
Fuck. But I’m also not surprised. “Was he convicted?”
“Yeah. He went to prison for a little under a year.”
Vlad. Elizabeth's dear friend, is a criminal. And she knows that. I know she knows it, and she's been hiding it from me.
“And now?”
“That's where things get weird,” Alex says. “After he got out, he disappeared for a while. Then he turned up in Croatia. Hey—” He stops. “That's where you are, isn't it? You said Elizabeth had a wedding—”
“That's not important right now,” I say, irritated. “Go on.”
“Uh ...where was I?”
Alex seems a little ... off. Hesitant. Distracted. Like he’s choosing his words carefully, and doesn’t want to upset me. The whole office must suspect something about me and Elizabeth, what with us both going on vacation together.
“Uh ... yeah, he started a couple of companies. Nothing illegal that I can find. This guy pays taxes. He owns property. He has legitimate business interests.”
“Doing what?”
“Investment holdings, consulting, technology ventures. Crypto. The usual vague rich-guy stuff.”
That's not what I was expecting. At all. I frown. “You think he's clean?”
“He’s either clean …” Alex pauses. “Or he's very good.”
“That's not an answer.”
“That's all I got.” He clears his throat. “There are also donations. Children's charities. Rehabilitation programs. Medical equipment funding. More than you'd expect from someone with his history.”
It doesn't make sense. I need it to make fucking sense. “What about recent activity?”
“Nothing jumps out. But he could be really, really good.”
I sink back onto one of the couches.
“Honestly, if you're asking whether he's behind the issues we're having, I can't see it. Not from what I've found. Why do you want to know about him?”
That’s not why I asked him to check Vlad’s background, but he has me thinking. “Just a hunch. Something I needed to know.”
I don’t give him specifics, but the pieces start to fit together as everything slowly falls into place. It explains Elizabeth’s evasiveness about her past. Inconsistencies in what she says, or chooses not to say.
It explains her technical knowledge and the ease with which she navigates around the secure systems, the way she reacts around certain conversations. Most of all, it explains the conversation with Takumi, and how Takumi and Vlad both seem to operate in the same hidden world.
Alex says he’s either clean or very good, and I can see that this guy is very good. But he’s not going to pull the wool over my eyes. More than that, it shows that Elizabeth is somehow connected, but I don't know how. Her resume was clean.
Something flashes in my head.
No wonder she has no college degree. She learned her skills a different way.
This guy was the organizer of a group.
The group Elizabeth and her friends have been talking about. And she was in that group which means … she must have been involved in shady operations. As a hacker, maybe? Someone operating in the same world as Vlad and Takumi.
No wonder she spotted the backdoor so quickly. No wonder she saw things my own team missed. No wonder she could walk into Knight Enterprises and start pulling apart systems that had stumped people for weeks.
The thought hits like a sledgehammer to my chest, and I wrestle with ugly thoughts, refusing to believe it.
“Matteo, you still there?”
“I'm still here,” I say slowly. I had a suspicion that Elizabeth was hiding something, but I never suspected this.
“That’s not why I called you,” Alex says.
My breath hitches in my throat.
There’s more?
“Sorry, I didn’t want to worry you with this while you were on vacation, but I think you need to know.”
Something pinches my gut. “Need to know what?”
He hesitates for a moment. “I've been tracing the breach signatures again. Cross-referencing access logs, timestamps … and patterns.” He exhales quietly.
“And?” Hurry the fuck up, Alex.
“They’re not random.”
My grip on the phone tightens. “I know that.”
“They’re consistent,” he continues. “Same methodology. Same structure. Whoever’s doing this knows our systems inside out.”
That doesn’t surprise me either. “I already told you that.”
“Uh ...” He pauses again, and I’m starting to lose my patience. “We found something in the access logs,” he says, quickly.
“Okay.” I scratch my chin, wondering why he’s wasting my time. “What?”
“The activity is tied to a valid login.”
“Whose?” My breath catches in my throat.
“You're not going to like—”
“Who the fuck is it?”
“Elizabeth.”
Everything around me freezes.
Elizabeth?
Fuck, no. I reject it instantly. “That’s not possible.”
“It’s her credentials. Same ID. Same authentication path. It’s clean, Matteo. Too clean.”
My jaw tightens. “But she’s not even in the country.”
“I know.” He pauses again. “That’s why I didn’t want to jump to conclusions. It could be a spoof. A mirror. Someone using her access. She logged in today.”
“I know. We both brought our laptops along, needing to keep an …”
Needing to keep an eye on the systems.
I wipe my hand over my face, wanting to wash away the grime of what I've just understood. “Are you saying Elizabeth is behind all the security issues we’ve been having?”
I think back to the past, when they started. Elizabeth wasn’t even here then.
“I’m saying the activity keeps resolving back to her credentials,” Alex says carefully. “Could someone be spoofing her access? Maybe. Could somebody be mirroring her authentication path? Possibly. But right now, if I had to point the finger at someone, she’s the strongest lead we’ve got.”
“When did this start?” I ask.
“Weeks ago,” he says. “But the pattern’s clearer now.”
Weeks ago. Around the time she came to me and told me it was an inside job. “Have you told anyone else?”