10. Vex

10

VEX

" J esus fucking Christ," Niro says as he looks up at the large house Alessio Viscuso calls home.

"It looks like Versace threw up out here," Bates adds.

I have to agree. It has a whole heap of Miami Godfather "say hello to my little friend" vibes. Men patrol the house. There is one by the gate, two flanking the front door, and one on the roof of a four-car garage. All of them are dressed in black; all of them are armed.

And all of them are focused on us.

Bates slides right up next to me. "Guess distraction is the way to break in here," he mutters. "Those fuckers haven't taken their eyes off us."

I nod once to show I understood.

"Must cost a fortune to heat," Niro says.

Catalina slings her arm over his shoulder. "And there's my little penny-pincher."

He shoves her away playfully. "I'm not penny-pinching."

"Babe, you turned the thermostat in the house down by five degrees after you saw the energy bill," she replies.

Niro laughs. "This is true. Can only fuck under the covers now so little Niro doesn't shrivel up with frostbite."

I can't help but chuckle as I take in all the Corinthian-style pillars flanking the front of the house. Even the James Bond-style sliding gates are black iron and gold with a giant crest on the front of them.

Our motorcycles look out of place.

We look out of place.

Switch and Sophia climb out of their truck.

"You grew up here?" Niro asks Sophia as she walks towards us.

She points up at a window on the second floor. "My bedroom."

"So, who lives here now?" I ask.

"Alessio. Mom goes to Miami for the winter, and not even Dad's death was going to stop that."

"I can actually appreciate that," Catalina says.

"Babe." Niro pretends to stab a knife in his own heart. "You wouldn't be sad if I died?"

Catalina laughs at her husband's antics. "Depends on what you were doing before you died. If you died trying to save babies from a burning building, I'd be really sad and grieve you forever. However, if you died after screwing over the Outlaws and trying to kill one of our own children, I'd probably have been the one who killed you."

Sophia smiles, but I can see it doesn't quite touch her eyes. Her father might have tried to kill her, and she might have killed him for it, but Catalina's joke still lands heavy, even as Niro and Switch laugh.

"Let's go in," Sophia says, heading to the front door. Switch takes her hand when they reach the steps and helps her take them one at a time.

Inside is just as over the top as the outside. More columns, marble, gaudy colors.

"I don't like it either," Alessio says, coming from a room to my right. The guy's a good-looking fucker. Tall. Lean but a fighter's stance. Dark hair a touch too long and floppy. It grazes the collar of his perfectly fitted suit jacket.

"Sorry," I say. "It's just a lot."

"Old money meets new world. When my parents arrived here in the eighties, this was all the rage, apparently. The reason I couldn't meet this morning is I hired an interior designer and contractor to gut the place after moving my mother's things into an apartment by The Met."

He kisses Sophia on both cheeks. "Are you doing okay, Pupparu?"

The pet name apparently means puppeteer, because Sophia, while the only daughter, was always able to pull her brothers' strings.

"I am. I did a reach test this morning and got further than I did last time. Shows my spinal flexibility has improved in the last month."

He looks at her proudly. "Good to hear it. The biker taking care of you okay?"

Sophia glances back at Switch. "Perfectly."

"The biker thinks you should keep your nose out of our business," Switch says, half-joking, half-serious.

Alessio almost smiles. "For as long as your business includes my sister, that isn't going to happen. I did say you didn't all need to come."

Niro snorts. "Yeah. The armed welcome party outside suggests we were right in covering our brother."

"They're always there. Being a don is not quite as simple as being an Outlaw."

Before they get into a pissing contest, I step in. "You have a problem with a hacker. Tell me about it?"

Alessio points towards a large room with more sofas and chairs in it than you can count. Not sure what the point of the room is. It looks like an overly cluttered hotel lobby to me. I suppose those big-ass lamps on the end tables are worth ten grand a piece.

Three men are situated around the perimeter, and I glance at them.

"My personal guards," he says. "You can speak in front of them."

I follow Alessio with Switch and Sofia to the sofas, but Bates, Niro, and Cat set up guard around the room.

"Why do you think you're being hacked?" I ask.

"It was when they hit the company we established to manage our real estate and development portfolio. The company is called VERE holdings. Viscuso Executive Real Estate," Alessio says as he takes a seat opposite me. "They took three million. And when we looked back, we could see there were much smaller amounts missing over a period of time. Then, boom, three million was gone in one hit."

My heart skips a beat. This was always Calista's MO. Make the connection, go small, see what alarm bells ring, then go big. She liked to tease and keep the risk low with the initial hit so the repercussions would be small if it triggered any kind of tracking.

"Organizations like ours are a prime target for hackers," Alessio says. "They think that because we run enterprises that skirt the law, we won't report this kind of theft to the police because it would draw attention to us and our holdings. But the real estate business is completely legitimate."

I lean forward and rest my elbows on my knees. "And you're sure this is an outside job?"

Alessio rolls his eyes. "Yes. I'm sure. We've gone through all the obvious answers."

"We think it may have been opportunistic," Sophia says. "While we tried to keep my accident out of the press, it didn't go unreported. I was responsible for that business. I'm certain from my files and the content on my laptop that I would have gone through the numbers each month with a fine-tooth comb. They took advantage of the fact I wasn't in charge."

Something doesn't make sense to me. "But then, doesn't that speak to an inside job, someone who knew what you were or weren't doing?"

"We have our own technical guy," Alessio says. "He's looked at the ways he thought they kept doing it but hasn't found a trace."

"Kept doing it?" Switch asks. "They've done it more than once?"

"Three times, different arms of our business," Alessio admits. "And I'm fucking pissed off about it. I'll kill the motherfucker when I find them."

"Your tech guy…did he set up one network? For all your businesses?" I ask.

Alessio shrugs. "I would have to ask. But we share software and emails."

"Who would have thought mobsters had enterprise software?" Switch says.

I huff and lean back, placing my arm over the back of the sofa. "Best guess without looking at it? Someone has exploited a network weakness to gain illegal access to your system. There will probably be traces of both their reconnaissance on your system and the scanning they did to find your vulnerabilities. Once they find access, there are so many ways they could have hacked you. Brute force attacks. They could spoof you. Use man-in-the-middle attacks, called an MitM hit. But I think the important thing here is that they've found a way to maintain access."

Alessio temples his fingertips as he thinks. "Can you take a look at our systems and tell us how they're getting in? Because I want our money back."

I swallow and try to hide what I fear most. That this is Calista. I'm a wealthy man, but I don't know if I would ever be able to foot the bill. Although, given how well her company is going, she might have enough of her own.

Having enough was never Calista's issue. She simply always wanted more.

And greed can land a girl in a lot of places she shouldn't be.

But I need to know if it's her. Because if it is, I'm going to clear her tracks and put her back on the next flight to California, mom or no mom. I'll see her off with a clear understanding.

She needs to stop shitting in my yard, because for whatever reason, I feel compelled to clean up after her.

"Sure. I can take a look. But in looking, I'm gonna see every single thing you probably don't want me to see. I'm going to be all over your files and drives and networks. Are you cool with that?"

Alessio looks up at the ceiling and purses his lips for a moment. "I am. Only you. And I'll have someone watch you while you do it."

"Fair enough. King says he'll be sending you a consulting bill."

"Understandable. I'd be paying it anyway. I was about to hire a company to come take a look at it for me, before Sophia told me about you."

The comment makes me uncomfortable. "Yeah?"

"I even had a preliminary conversation with someone. My father had looked into enhancing our data security last year. Even went so far as inviting their CEO to come and do a preliminary investigation, but because my father is a sexist asshole, he fired her before she could even take a proper look. Moray, I think her name was. One of the big cybersecurity firms."

My mouth is suddenly bone dry.

I'm not sure how to process the fact Calista was here, messing with the Cosa Nostra, and was fired because she was a woman. That's the exact kind of environment Calista would take as a dare.

And I can't believe that fifteen years after she left, I'm doing a fucking cleanup job for her.

Again.

She might have thought she could clear her tracks, but I know her. At least, I did. And I know a thing or two about hunting people down. I love how primal it is. Like any good hunter, the secret is to not let the prey know you are on to them.

It would be easy to storm over to Mrs. Moray's house right now and ask Calista outright. But given the nature of our conversation, she'd lie to me and deny it. Then, she'd change her methods, go back in, and scrub her trail.

I want traps in there to catch her in the act if she does.

Not that I'll ever tell Viscuso.

All he'll see is an impenetrable wall that will stop anyone from hacking him again.

"That's fine. I can pick it up from there. I got a shit ton of software I need. If you want to make sure we don't breach data, get your guy to meet me with a new laptop. We can download all the software together. I can leave the laptop with him at the end of each time we work together on getting you protected from any kind of cyber-attack."

Alessio narrows his eyes. "How do I know you won't put a switch in there somehow? So you can take control of all our systems?"

"If your guy is any good, he'll be able to understand what I'm doing. However, the fact you even need me suggests he isn't."

"Fuck it up, screw me over, I'll kill you," Alessio says.

I hear the readying of a weapon to fire.

"Threaten my brother again, and I'll shoot you and all those fuckers dancing around the perimeter of this room," Niro says.

Alessio smiles, like he didn't threaten me at all. "You can put that down."

Niro doesn't. He keeps his Glock pointed straight at Alessio Viscuso.

"Fine," I say finally. "You've got my word."