Chapter 7 - The Security Log
The study fell into a silence so profound you could hear the rain tapping against the glass like tiny fingernails.
Alessio stood by the window, his back to me, his broad shoulders tense beneath his dark sweater. When he finally turned back around, the grief in his face had been completely replaced by a cold, calculating rage.
“Whoever sent you that text knows you’re digging into Johns Hopkins,” Alessio said, his voice deadly quiet. “Which means the person who poisoned Leo in Baltimore, killed Isabella in Switzerland, and jammed that bead down his throat last night is the exact same person.”
“And they’re watching us right now,” I added, looking at my phone. “They saw me examining things at breakfast. They know I’m a threat.”
Alessio walked over to his wall safe, punched in a six-digit code, and pulled out a small black flash drive.
“Six months ago, right after Isabella’s funeral,” Alessio explained, plugging the drive into his desktop computer, “I hired a private intelligence firm to mirror all internal communication routers in this mansion. Every text, every email, every encrypted packet sent through our local Wi-Fi or cellular repeater is logged here.”
I stepped up beside his desk, leaning over his shoulder as lines of green code and data logs scrolled across his high-resolution monitor. The heat radiating from his body was intense, but both of us were entirely focused on the screen.
“Filter by the encrypted text sent to my cell phone at 9:15 AM today,” I suggested.
Alessio typed rapidly on the keyboard. The algorithm processed the request, narrowing twenty thousand data lines down to a single outbound transmission routed through an encrypted VPN proxy originating from inside the house.
“MAC address match,” Alessio read from the screen. “Device ID: iPhone 14 Pro.”
He clicked the device registration profile.
The screen displayed the owner’s name: Marcus Vance.
“Marcus,” I gasped. “Isabella’s stepbrother.”
“He was in Baltimore six months ago,” Alessio remembered, his hands gripping the edge of the desk so tightly his knuckles turned white. “He claimed he was attending a medical conference. He was the one who suggested Isabella take Leo to that clinic in Virginia...”
“He was feeding her false information,” I realized, the horrifying puzzle pieces locking together. “He poisoned Leo in Baltimore to force Isabella to panic. When she figured out Marcus was behind it and fled to Switzerland with the baby’s medical files, he had her car tampered with.”
“And last night,” Alessio growled, his dark eyes flashing with lethal intent, “he tried to finish the job before the corporate board vote on Friday.”
Before Alessio could march out of the study to kill Marcus with his bare hands, I grabbed his arm, holding him back.
“Alessio, stop!” I pleaded. “If you go down there and attack him now, his lawyers will claim you’re an unstable mobster. He’ll walk free on technicalities, and you’ll spend your life in prison away from Leo!”
Alessio looked down at my hand on his arm, his breathing heavy and ragged. “He killed my wife, Clara. He tried to murder my infant son twice.”
“And we are going to trap him so completely that he spends the rest of his life rotting in a maximum-security prison,” I said, looking into his eyes with absolute fierce determination. “We have the digital logs, but we need physical proof connecting him to the crime scene last night. We need him to confess.”
Alessio stared at me, his intense dark gaze softening just a fraction as he recognized the brilliant, ruthless mind behind my calm nurse facade.
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“How do we trap him?” Alessio asked softly.
I smiled—a dark, tactical smile. “We give him exactly what he wants. We tell the family that Leo has suffered a relapse and needs an emergency blood transfusion in the nursery.”
