“It is not responding.” Kaila’s voice is controlled but I can hear the edge beneath it. “It’s a localized malware worm. It blasted our firewall from the inside and broadcasted a beacon. The Bellanti are actively pulling the data from our servers right now, and there is no manual override.”
“Move,” I say.
I don’t wait for Kaila to roll her chair back. I shove her aside and take the terminal.
If someone accesses this data from outside my system, the automated push activates on a thirty-second delay. There is no override. The data sends to the Bellanti servers.
There is no override.
Dominic’s journal voice echoes in my head, confident in his own brilliant architecture. He built the dead man’s switch knowing I would steal the data. He aimed me like a weapon.
“Watch me,” I whisper.
My fingers fly across the keys faster than I have ever typed in my life. I don’t try to stop the transfer. I attack the worm. I write a localized loop script, feeding the Bellanti servers a continuous stream of garbage data—encrypted recipes, false routing numbers, empty directories—clogging the pipe.
The progress bar stutters at ninety-four percent.
“Mia, isolate the physical drive!” I shout, my eyes locked on the terminal. “Cut the hardline!”
“If I cut it while the loop runs, the drive corrupts,” Mia says, her hands hovering over the server array.
“Do it!”
Mia yanks the server rack’s primary optical trunk.
Sparks shower the floor. The terminal screen flashes red, pixelates, and dies.
Silence slams into the Vault. No hum. No fans. Just the harsh breathing of three women staring at a dead server.
“Did it send?” Kaila asks, her voice barely a whisper.
“They got the headers. Some financial routing data.” I lean back in the chair, my hands shaking for the first time. “But the operational files? The identities? The addresses? They’re gone. Corrupted. I killed it.”
I did not let Dominic use me as his bullet. I pulled my own trigger.
I pull out my phone. The number I memorized before I ran.
It rings. Once. Twice. Voicemail. His voice. Flat. Short.Leave a message.
“Dominic.” My voice does not shake. “I read the journals. The dead man’s switch activated, but I crashed the server before the operational files sent. The Bellanti do not have enough to find you.” A breath. One breath. “But they know you were building a weapon. You need to run. Take Fabio. Take Santi. Run.”
A pause. The words I did not plan to say.
“I am sorry I did not understand.”
I hang up.
The Vault is quiet. The breach is dead. Instead of sending the intelligence to destroy Dominic Costa, I saved him. I did not play the role he built for me.
The phone buzzes.
Not a call. A text. From Dominic’s number.
A single message on the screen. No punctuation. No greeting.
It was always you.
He knew. He always knew I was the only variable strong enough to break his own architecture.