Chapter 5 - THE SECURITY CHIEF FINALLY ADMITTED WHY ANDREW DIDN’T TRUST HIM
Victor agreed to meet them in the old library.
No weapons on the table.
Damian still carried one.
Victor noticed.
“Comforting.”
“You’re welcome.”
Martha sat beside Lucia.
Victor remained standing.
Lucia spoke first.
“Andrew told Damian not to give you the card.”
“I know.”
“How?”
“Because Andrew told me he was going to.”
Martha froze.
“What?”
Victor looked at her.
“Three days before he died.”
“You spoke to him?”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you tell Damian?”
“Because Andrew asked me not to.”
Martha laughed bitterly.
“If one more person says that—”
Victor cut in.
“He didn’t trust me.”
“Good.”
Victor nodded.
“Yes.”
That stopped her.
“You admit it?”
“I gave him a reason.”
Damian’s voice cooled.
“What reason?”
Victor looked at him.
“Your father.”
The room changed.
Victor continued.
“Before you took control, I worked directly for Don Matteo.”
Martha glanced at Damian.
His father.
Victor continued.
“Matteo required secondary access to every security system.”
“Normal?”
“No.”
“Paranoid?”
Damian said nothing.
Victor continued.
“Enzo also had emergency access because he handled external properties.”
Lucia’s face tightened.
“You never removed him?”
“I thought I did.”
Damian stood.
“You thought?”
Victor’s jaw clenched.
“After your father died, I changed every credential.”
“Every physical token.”
“Every network key.”
“But?”
“There was an archival administrative layer created under the old system.”
Martha frowned.
“In English.”
“A door behind the door.”
Victor looked at Damian.
“I didn’t know it still existed.”
Damian’s face hardened.
“And Andrew found it?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“Seven weeks before he died.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
Victor met his eyes.
“Because if I told you I had left a vulnerability in the security network for eleven years, you would remove me.”
“Yes.”
“I know.”
Martha stared.
“So you hid it.”
“Yes.”
“And Andrew didn’t trust you because you were protecting your job.”
“Yes.”
No heroic excuse.
No blackmail.
Pride.
Fear.
Victor continued.
“He told me the vulnerability had been used.”
“To do what?”
“Access staff schedules.”
“Camera archives.”
“Vehicle movement.”
“Possibly medical records.”
Lucia whispered,
“Vale.”
Victor nodded.
“The clinic is on the same legacy network.”
Damian’s expression darkened.
“So Andrew believed somebody with the old access was reading everything.”
“Yes.”
“Who had the access originally?”
Victor answered.
“Your father.”
“Me.”
“Enzo.”
“Anyone else?”
“Doctor Vale had limited medical access.”
Martha frowned.
“Not Lucia?”
“No.”
Lucia nodded.
“I never used security systems.”
Martha looked at Victor.
“Why did Andrew say not to give you the card?”
“Because I failed the first test.”
“What test?”
“He asked whether the old layer still existed.”
“I told him no.”
“But you knew?”
“I suspected.”
“That is lying.”
“Yes.”
Victor’s face remained grim.
“I thought I could fix it quietly.”
Damian laughed once.
Cold.
“That phrase is becoming a family disease.”
Victor accepted it.
“You’re right.”
Damian looked at him.
“Why should I trust you now?”
“You shouldn’t.”
Martha glanced at Damian.
Same answer he had given her.
Victor continued.
“You should verify what I say.”
Damian sat again.
“Good.”
Martha almost smiled.
Victor slid a printed access report across the table.
“I reconstructed part of the archival traffic.”
Lucia leaned closer.
“From where?”
“Offline backups.”
“Can they be altered?”
“Yes.”
Martha groaned.
Victor gave her a look.
“But not easily.”
“Better.”
He pointed at a series of timestamps.
“Someone used the legacy administrator account nineteen times in the last year.”
“Locations?”
“Foundation office.”
“House clinic.”
“North warehouse.”
“Private garage.”
Damian asked,
“Any on the night Andrew died?”
Victor tapped one line.
“Yes.”
Martha’s pulse increased.
“Where?”
“Garage.”
“Whose car?”
Victor looked at Damian.
“Yours.”
Martha turned.
Damian’s expression changed.
“I wasn’t here.”
“I know.”
“Where were you?”
“Following Andrew.”
Victor nodded.
“Exactly.”
Martha understood.
“Someone accessed Damian’s garage while he was gone.”
“Yes.”
“What did they do?”
“We need the old physical logs.”
Lucia said,
“Those are stored at the warehouse.”
Damian looked at Victor.
“Which warehouse?”
Victor hesitated.
“North Crest.”
Of course.
Martha stood.
“So we go there.”
Damian looked at her.
“No.”
She stared.
“No?”
“You came here to investigate your brother.”
“Yes.”
“You are not trained for this.”
“I just knocked you to the floor before a sniper put a bullet through your chest.”
“You got lucky.”
“I noticed the dot.”
“Exactly.”
Martha folded her arms.
“What does that mean?”
Damian looked toward Andrew’s memory card.
“He said you saw the signal.”
“Yes.”
“And we still don’t know how he predicted that.”
Martha’s anger cooled.
True.
Lucia looked at her.
“Did Andrew ever teach you anything about signals?”
“No.”
“Codes?”
“Yes.”
Damian leaned forward.
“What kind?”
“Sibling things.”
“Such as?”
Martha hesitated.
“When we were kids, Andrew used colors when he thought our parents were listening.”
Victor stared.
“Colors?”
“It was stupid.”
“Red meant danger.”
The room went still.
Damian looked at her.
“Red.”
Martha realized it too.
“The dot.”
Lucia frowned.
“But Andrew couldn’t know a sniper would use a red dot.”
“No.”
Martha thought harder.
Then remembered.
“Unless he wasn’t predicting the sniper.”
“What?”
She walked toward the lighter.
“Andrew’s message said, ‘If Damian is hearing this with Martha, then she saw the signal.’”
“Yes.”
“He didn’t say sniper.”
Victor leaned forward.
“So what signal?”
Martha picked up the lighter.
A.B.
Silver.
She turned it under the lamp.
Near the bottom edge, almost invisible, was a tiny strip of red lacquer.
Her breath caught.
“I didn’t notice this before.”
Damian stood.
“What?”
Martha twisted the lighter.
The red strip formed a narrow arrow.
Pointing toward the removable base where the memory card had been hidden.
Lucia whispered,
“The signal.”
Martha closed her eyes.
Andrew had not predicted the sniper’s laser.
He had predicted Martha would recognize red as his childhood danger marker and examine the lighter.
The fact she had noticed the sniper’s red point first had been coincidence.
A coincidence Andrew’s wording made look prophetic.
Damian breathed out.
“Good.”
Martha looked at him.
“What?”
“One mystery that isn’t supernatural.”
She almost laughed.
Then Victor said,
“Check the lacquer.”
Martha examined it.
Tiny marks were etched beside the red strip.
Numbers.
Not enough to be random.
Lucia took a photograph.
“Could be a code.”
Martha stared.
“It is.”
“How do you know?”
“Andrew used dates.”
“What date?”
Martha looked closer.
11-14.
Her chest tightened.
“My birthday.”
Damian asked,
“What happens if we use that as the password?”
They returned to the laptop.
One locked folder remained.
Martha entered 1114.
Access denied.
She frowned.
“Maybe year.”
She entered her birth year.
Denied.
Then she remembered something.
“Andrew always reversed my birthday because he said I stole his Halloween candy.”
Lucia blinked.
“That is absurd.”
“Sibling logic.”
Martha entered 4111.
The folder opened.
Inside were scans of garage logs.
A photograph.
And one email.
Damian opened the email.
Sender:
Doctor Elias Vale.
Recipient:
Enzo Falcone.
Subject:
M. Falcone medication review.
Martha stared.
“M. Falcone.”
Damian went still.
“My father was Matteo Falcone.”
Lucia covered her mouth.
The email had been sent eleven days before Matteo Falcone died.
Vale had written:
The symptoms are progressing faster than expected. I recommend no further alteration without reassessment.
No explicit confession.
No named drug.
No murder instructions.
But the implication was terrible.
Lucia whispered,
“Doctor Vale was treating Dad.”
Damian’s face went white.
Victor looked away.
Martha stared at the screen.
The case had just become older than Andrew.
Andrew had not stumbled onto a new conspiracy.
He had uncovered something that may have begun with Damian’s father’s death eleven years earlier.
May you like
And if Enzo had killed his own brother to gain hidden access to the Falcone organization—
then Andrew Bellini had died because he found a family secret no one was supposed to survive long enough to expose.
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