Chapter 5: The Head of Security Under the Glass
The main dining room felt smaller when we returned, the air thick with the residue of an unspoken panic. Vanessa Bellini sat rigidly in her chair at the far end of the long dark marble table, her red strapless dress a stark splash of color against the muted wood and polished silver. Her diamond necklace caught the warm amber wash of the chandelier, rising and falling with breaths that were far too shallow. She refused to look at me as the heavy oak doors clicked shut behind us, locking us into a quiet that felt less like a room and more like a compression chamber.
Luca didn't sit down. He walked straight to the head of the table where his place had been cleared, setting the isolation bag containing the second transmitter directly onto the polished stone surface. The black fabric of his suit jacket pulled taut across his broad shoulders as he planted both palms flat against the table and leaned forward, his dark eyes fixing not on Vanessa, but on the man standing near the sideboard.
Standing at stiff attention beside the double doors were the two guards who had flanked the entrance earlier, their earpieces silent, their expressions rigidly neutral. But the man Luca was addressing was Marcus Vance, head of estate security, a veteran of private enforcement whose broad jaw was clenched so hard a muscle ticked rhythmically beneath his left ear.
"You cleared this sector personally at four o'clock this afternoon, Marcus," Luca said. His voice was low, devoid of anger, which made it far more dangerous than any shout. "You signed the manifest. You verified the analog lines and the digital relays. Explain to me how a secondary trunk-tap was installed inside a primary service panel without triggering a single system alert."
Marcus swallowed hard, his neck stretching against the stiff white collar of his shirt. "Boss, I don't know. The logs showed green across all twelve zones. There wasn't a packet loss, there wasn't a voltage drop. Whoever wired that box didn't just splice into the line—they cloned our own encryption keys. They had to have administrator credentials."
"Administrator credentials," Luca repeated, the words rolling slowly off his tongue. He straightened up, turning his head slightly to look at Vanessa. "How interesting. Because as I recall, only three people on this estate hold master administrative keys: myself, Marcus, and my guest of honor."
Vanessa jerked her chin up, her face draining of what little color the warm chandelier light allowed. "Are you out of your mind, Luca? You're interrogating me over a piece of wiretapped hardware? I didn't even know that box existed until that girl pulled the chair back! If your incompetent security team can't sweep a dining room properly, that's your failure, not mine."
"It's security equipment," I muttered under my breath, repeating her earlier excuse just softly enough for the acoustics of the vaulted ceiling to carry it back down.
Marcus shot a sharp, warning glare in my direction, but Luca didn't blink. He reached out and slid a heavy black leather-bound logbook across the marble table toward the security chief.
"Open it," Luca commanded.
May you like
Marcus stepped forward, his boots clicking hollowly against the parquetry floor. He opened the book, flipping past the morning entries straight to the afternoon shift. His eyes scanned the lines, and the blood visibly drained from his face, leaving his skin a pale, sallow gray.
"Mr. Moretti," Marcus whispered, his voice cracking slightly. "These aren't my entries. Someone forged my signature on the four-thirty sweep."
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