Hacking the Past

Hacking the Past
Selena's POV
The police station alarm was screaming.
Selena's fingers flew across the keyboard as red lights flashed around her. She had sixty seconds before security found her in Detective Vance's old office.
"Come on, come on," she whispered, typing faster.
The computer screen showed file after file. Cases from years ago. But she needed one specific folder. The one marked "Maria Rossi - Personal Investigation."
Forty seconds.
She heard footsteps running down the hall. Getting closer.
There! The folder appeared on screen. But it was locked with three different passwords.
Thirty seconds.
Selena tried her mother's birthday again. Wrong.
She tried her own name. Wrong.
Twenty seconds.
The footsteps stopped right outside the door. Someone was fumbling with keys.
Selena closed her eyes and thought. What would her mother use as a password? Something important. Something secret.
Ten seconds.
"Ghost bullet," she typed.
The folder opened.
The door burst open behind her.
"Freeze! Hands up!"
But Selena was already moving. She grabbed the USB drive from the computer and dove through the window.
Not through the glass. The window was already open because Detective Vance used to smoke here.
She landed on the fire escape outside. Three stories up.
Gunshots behind her. The officers were shooting at the ceiling, not at her. Maybe they didn't want to kill a Rossi.
Even a runaway Rossi.
She climbed down the metal stairs as fast as she could. Her hands were shaking but she didn't stop.
At the bottom, she jumped into the alley where she had hidden Rook's motorcycle.
She had never driven one before. But how hard could it be?
Very hard, apparently.
The bike wobbled as she drove through the back streets. She almost crashed twice. But she made it to the old subway tunnel where she had set up her temporary hideout.
Safe. For now.
She plugged the USB drive into her laptop with shaking hands.
"Please work," she whispered.
The files loaded. Dozens of them. All in her mother's handwriting.
Selena started reading.
The first file was dated three months before her mother died.
"I think Enzo is hiding something from me. Money has been disappearing from our accounts. Not a lot. But enough to notice."
The next entry was two weeks later.
"Found bank statements Enzo thought he had hidden. He's been paying someone. A lot of money. Every month for five years. I don't know who."
Selena's heart started beating faster. Her father had been paying someone? Who?
She kept reading.
"The payments go to an account in Switzerland. I tried to trace it but hit a wall. Whoever owns that account knows how to stay hidden."
"Asked Marco about the missing money. He said he didn't know anything. But he was lying. I could tell."
"Enzo came home with bruises on his knuckles today. When I asked what happened, he said business meeting. But I know what Enzo's business meetings look like. Someone got hurt."
"I'm scared. Not of Enzo. Never of Enzo. But of what he's becoming. Or maybe what he always was and I just never saw it."
Selena felt tears starting. Her mother had been scared. And alone.
The entries got darker.
"Found out who owns the Swiss account. A woman named Catherine Volkov. She's connected to the Russian mob. Why is my husband paying the Russians?"
"Followed Enzo tonight. He went to meet someone at the docks. I couldn't get close enough to see who. But when he came back, he was carrying a briefcase."
"The briefcase had photos inside. Pictures of dead people. People I recognized. Families who had crossed Enzo in business deals."
"My husband is not just in the mafia. He's something worse. He's a killer."
Selena stopped reading. Her hands were shaking so hard she could barely hold the laptop.
Her mother had found out what her father really was. What he really did.
But there was more.
"I have to get Selena away from here. Away from him. She can't grow up around this violence."
"Contacted the FBI. Agent Sarah Chen seems trustworthy. She says they can protect us if I testify against Enzo."
"Meeting Agent Chen tomorrow night. I'm going to tell her everything. The Swiss accounts. The photos. All of it."
"If something happens to me, I've hidden copies of everything in Selena's music box. The one with the dancing ballerina. She'll find it someday when she's old enough to understand."
The final entry was dated the day her mother died.
"Marco knows. I don't know how, but he knows about Agent Chen. He came to see me today. Told me I was making a mistake. That family loyalty comes before everything."
"I told him loyalty goes both ways. That Enzo had betrayed all of us by working with the Russians."
"Marco laughed. Said I had it backwards. Said Enzo wasn't working WITH the Russians. He was working AGAINST them. The payments, the photos, everything - it was Enzo trying to destroy them."
"But if that's true, then why didn't he tell me? Why all the secrets?"
"Marco said some secrets are kept out of love. That Enzo was protecting me from a war I couldn't understand."
"I don't know what to believe anymore."
"Meeting with Agent Chen in two hours. I'll ask her to verify Marco's story. If he's telling the truth, I'll call off the investigation."
"If he's lying, I'll burn this whole family down."
"I love you, Selena. Whatever happens tonight, remember that everything I do is for you."
The file ended there.
Selena stared at the screen. Her mother had been trying to save her. But she had walked into a trap.
She thought about the music box her mother mentioned. The one with the dancing ballerina.
She still had it. Locked away in a storage unit across town.
But first, she needed to know more about Agent Sarah Chen.
Selena hacked into the FBI database. It took her twenty minutes to break through their security.
She searched for Agent Chen.
Found her.
Sarah Chen had been killed in a car accident three days after Selena's mother died.
The accident report said her brakes had failed.
But Selena knew better. There were no accidents in her world. Only murders made to look like accidents.
Someone had killed Agent Chen to keep her quiet.
But who? Marco? Her father? Someone else?
She dug deeper into Agent Chen's files.
Found something that made her blood freeze.
Agent Chen's final report, written the day before she died:
"Maria Rossi's information has been verified. Enzo Rossi is indeed working against the Russian mob. However, Mrs. Rossi doesn't know the full truth."
"Enzo isn't just fighting the Russians. He's fighting for his daughter's life."
"Five years ago, the Russians kidnapped Selena Rossi. They held her for three days before Enzo got her back. The child has no memory of this because she was drugged."
"The Russians made a deal with Enzo. As long as he pays them monthly tribute and helps eliminate their enemies, they will leave his daughter alone."
"Every person Enzo has killed in the past five years was a Russian target. He's not a monster. He's a father doing whatever it takes to protect his child."
"Mrs. Rossi plans to testify against her husband tomorrow. She doesn't understand that if Enzo goes to prison, there will be no one left to protect Selena."
"The Russians will kill the girl within a week."
"I have to stop Mrs. Rossi from testifying. Even if it means destroying my own career."
"Some secrets should stay buried."
Selena closed the laptop.
Everything she thought she knew was wrong.
Her father wasn't the monster. He was trying to save her.
Her mother wasn't the victim. She was going to get them all killed.
And Marco...
Marco had been telling the truth about her father working against the Russians.
But if Marco knew the truth, why had he let her mother die?
Unless...
Unless Marco was working for the Russians.
Selena's phone buzzed. Text message.
"Having fun reading bedtime stories?"
It was from Marco.
Another message appeared:
"Your father really is a hero, isn't he? Too bad heroes always die in the end."
Then a photo.
Her father, tied to a chair. But not in the warehouse anymore.
He was in her old bedroom. In the house where she grew up.
"Nostalgic, isn't it?" Marco's next message read. "This is where it all started. Where your mother made her first mistake."
"And where you'll make your last one."
"Come home, sweetheart. It's time for a family reunion."
"P.S. - Bring the music box. We both know you still have it."
The messages stopped.
Selena stared at her phone.
Marco knew about the music box. Which meant he knew her mother had hidden evidence there.
Evidence that could prove who was really pulling the strings.
But if she went to get it, she would be walking into another trap.
And if she didn't, her father would die.
She looked at her laptop. At all the secrets her mother had died trying to protect.
Then she made her choice.
She was going home.
But first, she had one more file to check.
She opened Agent Chen's personnel record.
And found something that made her heart stop.
Agent Sarah Chen's emergency contact was listed as her brother.
Detective James Vance.
The same Detective Vance who had just been murdered by Marco.
The same Detective Vance who had been helping her family for years.
Which meant Vance hadn't been working for her father.
He had been working for his sister.
Working for the FBI.
Which meant everything Marco had told her about Vance was a lie.
And if Vance was FBI, then maybe he had hidden something before Marco killed him.
Something that could save them all.
Selena grabbed her keys.
She wasn't just going home to get the music box.
She was going to Detective Vance's house first.
Because if he was really Agent Chen's brother, then maybe he had kept copies of his sister's files.
Files that might contain the one piece of evidence that could destroy Marco forever.
The truth about who really ordered her mother's death.
And why the ghost bullet had been meant for her.