Chapter 3 - The Server Room Breach
The basement server room was a stark contrast to the sunlit luxury of the upper floors, illuminated only by the frantic blinking of blue and green LED lights stacked in towering metal racks. The air was ice-cold, humming with the relentless drone of cooling fans. I sat before a dual-monitor workstation, my fingers flying across the mechanical keyboard while Dante stood sentinel behind my chair, his dark silhouette blocking the narrow metal exit.
"This encryption is military-grade," I muttered, my eyes straining against the glare of the code scrolling down the screen. "Whoever wiped those logs didn't just use a standard admin override. They used a physical hardware bypass."
"Meaning it had to be done from inside this room," Dante said, his hand resting casually on the back of my chair, close enough that the heat of his arm radiated through my uniform sleeve. I could feel the tension humming through him, a predator locked in a cage of his own making. "Which narrows the suspect list down to four people. Myself, my head of security, my brother, and the lead estate manager."
"Or someone with a master key," I added, hitting a sequence of keys that brought up the access card logs for the past seventy-two hours. "Look here. Card 04-B. Registered to the estate manager, Thomas Vance. But the timestamp shows it was used at 3:14 AM on the night of the murder. Right when the cameras went dead."
Dante leaned in closer, his shoulder brushing mine. His dark hair fell slightly over his forehead as he stared at the glowing log entry. "Thomas has been with my family for fifteen years. He held me when my father died."
"People change when the price is right, Mr. Romano," I said, glancing sideways at him. The harsh blue light caught the sharp angles of his face and the faint, pale scars tracing his jawline. "Or when they're backed into a corner."
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Before Dante could answer, a sharp alarm shrieked through the server room. The monitors flickered, and the primary screens went pitch black, replaced by a single flashing red line of text: *EXTERNAL CONNECTION DETECTED. OVERRIDE INITIATED.*
Dante cursed under his breath, his hand instantly darting beneath his black suit jacket to grip the butt of his sidearm. "Someone just locked down the perimeter doors from the main terminal upstairs," he growled, pulling the heavy pistol from its concealed holster with practiced, fluid ease. "Stay behind me."
