Chapter 24 The Newsletter
Anastasia (Interlude)
The house was quiet when I walked in, eerily quiet, like something was waiting in the corner, ready to jump out at me when I wasn't looking. And boy, was I right.
"Ah!" I flinched loudly when the lights suddenly turned on in the living room. I was by the stairs now, ready to sneak up to my room but I should have known better. I should have known he would be waiting.
"Care to tell me where you've been?" I didn't even need to be told before I made my way to the living room, my head lowering as I got to the pristine white couch he was sitting on.
Everything in the house was white. Creepily white. From the walls to the furniture to the paintings. He has always loved the colour white because, according to him, it best represents the idea of purity. That's why most of the things he had, including his designs and possessions, either had white in them or were fully decked out in white.
Like me.
"A brunch date."
"With who?"
"Ariel Bennett. She's an artist whom I mistakenly spilt my drink on the other night at the Vanity Fair party. I asked her out on a coffee date to properly apologise for the inconvenience I had caused her and to control the situation."
He glanced up from his ring, which he had been fidgeting with. "Hmm... You're sure you didn't just use that as an excuse to avoid attending dinner with the Lancasters?"
I shook my head immediately, my heart pounding in my ear. "No sir."
"How did it go then?"
"It's been settled. I also sent my team to help out with taking care of
"Yeah. Kate told me," the snitch.
"Regardless, though..." I took an unconscious step back as he stood. "You know the rule. You were meant to tell me."
"I... I did. I sent a text."
"Not enough, my dear." I felt instantly repulsed as he reached out his hand to tuck a strand of loose hair behind my ear. Then caressed my cheek. Hopefully he can't smell the alcohol on my breath. I only had one glass.
"You want a friend so bad, don't you?" I glanced up to see the irritating twinkle in his eyes and looked back down at my feet.
"No sir. I don't."
"Nah, it's fine. You can admit it. I think you deserve one too. So you know what you'll do..."
Nah, I don't want to know. In fact, I want to leave. I just knew whatever he was going to say next would crush me. It is what he always does.
"Invite her to the upcoming cruise. That'll be a good way to start your friendship, no?"
Immediately, I shook my head. "No, please, no. I don't want a friend. I don't need a friend. You don't have to do this."
He chuckled lightly. "I'm not doing anything there. This is all on you. You know the rules."
I tried to hold onto him as he started to leave but he flung my hands away, in the process, sending me to the floor.
"Please, no..." Not her too. "Dad!"
Vincent
Monterrey, Mexico,
9:15 am,
I had been so sure Valerie's claim of a mixed up order was wrong until... I got to their warehouse myself and saw the blunder before my very own eyes.
That was what she had called me out on Jose's birthday to discuss.
"Your people made a mistake with my order."
At first I'd been offended. Why would she make such an accusation when this wouldn't even be their first order with us? But then she had shown me their order list and invited me to the warehouse to see what had been delivered to them in place of their actual order.
I was dumbfounded.
MP5 submachines instead of AR-15s and 5.56 ammunition crates instead of the 9mm ammunitions?
I took out my phone to dial Kael's number the minute I got back into my car, right outside the warehouse. "Sir," he said when he picked up the call. "I was just about to call you."
"Yeah? Well, that can wait. Tell me why a container of wrong orders was sent to the Cortes and not just one out of the list, but everything. What kind of absolute blunder is that?"
He cleared his throat and went silent for a second before answering. "Uhm... that's why I called you."
"What are you talking about?"
"There has been a huge mix-up of client orders, especially with the current batch that was just sent out. Diego called to inform me about it this morning.”
“And…” I flexed my hands slightly in my lap.
“Diego claims he had followed the order list, which I confirmed with the shipment batch we sent out but clients keep calling that their deliveries are wrong. We're thinking of the probability of a breach in the system.”
“Thinking?”
"Well, I've called in Jules to check out what is wrong. She's currently going through his system.”
I pursed my lips for a moment. “Stop all activities till we find out what is wrong?”
“Sir?”
“You heard me. Stop everything. Production, distribution, research.“
I have a feeling this is more than just an order error.
Brooklyn, New York,
7:10pm,
Within a few hours of driving away from the warehouse and going to the airport in Mexico, I landed in New York, angry and irritated by the mix-up. Something was going on and it irked me to know I didn’t have all the answers yet. Not to talk of the concerned and not-so-concerned calls I'd received from some associates within the same hour it took for me to get to New York.
I put a call to Kael the minute I got into my ride in the airport parking lot and waited for him to pick up. He did so after a few rings. "Sir".
“Have you found anything?”
He went silent for a beat. “Yes, sir, and… it's bad.” Fuck.
“Fill me in.”
“A bug was planted on one of the supervisors' computers through a pornographic newsletter that he clicked on one month ago.” I just had to stop him there.
“A pornographic newsletter?”
“Yes. He has been using his work computer to visit pornographic websites for a while now and received newsletters from them, which I'm sure is why he didn't suspect this particular newsletter when it came in.”
I scoffed. So not only had he broken the rule of mixing business with personal issues, his actions were also the reason our security had been breached??
“Due to the process of sending information from one system to another, the bug had spread, which is how the order list had been tampered with on Diego's system. According to Jules, the spyware used is a very advanced software so there's a possibility that the culprit behind this had listened in on every conversation done through infected systems, retrieved important information like client databases and shipment routes and monitored live screen activity in real time.”
“Whoever had done this has access to all our information now. They can do and undo whenever they like.”
Fuck. This was worse than I thought.