Chapter 73 The Night Before Fire
Leo’s POV
I don’t sleep the night before a war. Most people think I’m just paranoid, but paranoia is just what they call it when you have a better imagination for disaster than everyone else. I was already in the walls when the basement access attempt began, sitting in my secondary monitoring position. It is a small, cramped space behind the ventilation ducts of the library, filled with three monitors and enough caffeine to stop a heart. I like the darkness here because it reminds me that the systems I build are the only things that truly matter in this house. The rest of the mansion is just stone and ego, but the network is the nervous system. If I control the nerves, I control the beast.
The alert didn't scream. It didn't flash red or trigger the sirens that would wake the dead. It just hummed, a low, persistent vibration in my pocket that made my skin crawl. I pulled my tablet closer, my fingers already dancing across the keys before I was even fully conscious of the threat. The attempt was sophisticated. This wasn't some script kiddie trying to brute force a password or a common thief with a crowbar. It was a credential replay attack. Someone was feeding the system a biometric signature that looked, acted, and felt like it belonged to the master of the house.
"Come on, you bastard," I whispered to the flickering screen. "Show me who you think you are."
I went to work, my mind moving faster than the data packets. I had four minutes. If I didn't stop it by then, the vault door would cycle, and the server room would be wide open. I traced the lifted credential through the back-end logs, digging into the digital history of the last few days. My breath hitched when the result flashed on the screen in cold, white text. The signature belonged to David. Not a copy, not a guess, but a perfect digital mirror of his own thumbprint and retinal scan.
Someone had cloned David’s biometric signature. They had likely lifted it from a legitimate scan he performed days ago, maybe at the front gate or the study door. Whoever was behind this wasn't just trying to get in; they were trying to frame the boss for his own destruction. They wanted to enter that server room and either wipe every byte of evidence we had collected or replace it with something altered, something that would make our case look like a fabrication. If the files were changed from David’s account, Judge Crane would throw the whole thing out as a Blackwell power play.
I didn't panic. Panic is for people who don't have a plan B. I killed the external connection to the basement terminal before the access cycle could finish. I watched the progress bar stall at ninety-eight percent, then plummet into a red error message that signaled a total system timeout. Simultaneously, I engaged the secondary protocol. I hadn't told David or Brittany about this one. It was a deep-layer lock, a system I installed in the middle of the night two weeks ago because I am Leo and I do not fully trust any system I didn't build with my own two hands from the ground up.
"Nobody's home tonight," I muttered, a cold smile touching my lips as I watched the intruder get bounced into a digital black hole.
I tapped the screen, sending the three-pulse signal to David’s phone. I knew he was in the hallway with Brittany, finally having the conversation they should have had months ago, but the war didn't care about their timing. He would know what it meant. He would be moving already, a shadow in the hallways, headed for the stairs. While he handled the physical security, I stayed in the digital trenches. I needed to know where that clone came from. A biometric signature doesn't just walk out of a secure database. It has to be exported, modified, and then replayed from a local node within the mansion's own Wi-Fi mesh.
I started the trace. It was a tedious process, jumping from one internal relay to another, following the ghost of the packet as it tried to mask its origin. The mansion's network is a labyrinth, but I’m the one who built the maze. I bypassed the dummy addresses and the encrypted tunnels, my fingers flying over the keyboard until the plastic keys felt hot under my tips.
"Talk to me," I urged the monitor. "Where are you hiding?"
The trace took eight minutes. Each second felt like an hour. My heart was thumping against my ribs, a dull, rhythmic reminder that the gala was only hours away. If we didn't catch this now, the brothers would have a back door into our entire strategy, and the whole house of cards would come down before the first guest arrived. I watched as the map of the house flashed on my center screen, a blue dot finally blinking into existence in a corner of the second floor.
I zoomed in, my stomach dropping as the hardware ID appeared in a small pop-up window. I recognized the network address immediately. I had seen it every single day for the past two weeks. It was the same device that had been feeding information to the brothers. The source. The person we had identified and were feeding with carefully crafted misinformation about the gala venue and the legal filing times.
I stared at the screen, a cold sweat breaking out on my forehead. We thought we were the ones playing the game. We thought we were the ones leading the dance, giving them just enough lies to keep them busy while we prepared the real strike. But the logs were showing a much darker reality. The credential clone hadn't just been used now. It had been created six hours ago, and it had been tested twice during the day while I was busy with the final server download.
The source was active in the last six hours, registered to the very device we were watching. This wasn't a mistake. This wasn't a leak we were controlling. This was a counter-intelligence operation that had been running right under our noses. The source hadn't been fooled by our fake gala venue or the false timing. They had been using those lies to keep us distracted while they worked on the only thing that could actually stop us—the evidence itself.
I checked the device's location again. It wasn't in the guest wing anymore. It was moving. Fast. It was heading toward the service stairs that led directly to the studio. My blood ran cold as I realized what was happening. If they couldn't wipe the digital servers because of my secondary lock, they were going for the physical collection. They were going to destroy the dresses, the sketches, and the woman who made them.
I scrambled to open the hallway cameras, my hands shaking. I saw David moving through the gallery, his face a mask of fury as he headed for the basement. He didn't know. He thought the threat was downstairs. I tried to open the comms to warn him, but the screen flickered and died. A local jammer. Someone had activated a high-frequency jammer in the hallway, cutting off my ability to talk to the man who was about to walk into a diversion.
I looked at the blue dot on my map. It had reached the studio door. I looked at the hardware ID one last time, praying I was wrong, praying it was a spoofed address. But the signature was unique. It was the tablet I had personally encrypted for the one person Brittany trusted more than anyone else in the studio. The person who had been sitting by her side, helping her stitch the closing look, listening to every word of our planning.
The source they identified and have been feeding misinformation. Which means the source knows they know, has known for days, and has been playing along while preparing this.
The credential clone originated from a device inside the mansion, active in the last six hours, registered to a network address Leo recognizes immediately — it is the same device that has been feeding information to the brothers for the past two weeks. The source they identified and have been feeding misinformation. Which means the source knows they know, has known for days, and has been playing along while preparing this.