Chapter 62 A SPY

Chapter 62 A SPY
NOVA'S POV

I got to the estate before both of them.

Riley was in the kitchen when I came in, putting things away from dinner.

She looked at my face and handed me a plate of food without saying anything about it.

I sat at the kitchen table and ate without really tasting any of it as I stared at the window above the sink while the night pressed flat against the glass outside.

Elias came in at half past eight.

He dropped his jacket on the back of the chair across from me and went straight to the fridge then came back with two bottles of water and put one in front of me then sat down. He looked at my plate, then at my face.

"You ate," he said, like that mattered right now.

"Riley made me something." I pushed the plate aside and wrapped both hands around the water bottle. "Callum is not back yet?"

"Ten minutes behind me." He twisted the cap off his bottle. "He called while I was driving. Said he had one more thing to deal with at the office."

I nodded and looked back at the window.

Elias was quiet for a moment, turning his bottle in his hands.

"It is not Jasmine," he said.

I looked at him across the table.

"I know it crossed your mind." He held my gaze. "It crossed mine too on the drive back this morning. I spent twenty minutes sitting with it before letting it go."

"Why did you let it go?" I asked.

"Because the communication pattern Reeves showed us goes back eighteen months." He set the bottle down. "Jasmine has been on that floor for three years but she only got access to senior level financial projections eight months ago when she moved up from junior analyst." He looked at me steadily. "The timeline doesn't fit."

I sat with that for a moment.

He was right. I had been so unsettled by the investigator's words that I had let the fear of it land on the nearest person without checking whether it made sense first.

"She said something to me before she left my office today." I turned the water bottle slowly on the table surface. "She told me to be careful how I moved with whatever name came up. That some people had more to lose than I realized."

Elias frowned slightly. "What did she mean by that?"

"I don't know." I looked at him. "But she knew something she wasn't saying."

The front door opened and Callum's footsteps came through the entrance hall, heavier than usual, the particular rhythm of someone who had been moving fast and hadn't slowed down yet. He came into the kitchen still in his full suit, his tie loosened at the collar, and looked between us.

"I know who it is." He pulled the chair out beside me and sat down and put a single printed page flat on the table between us.

Elias leaned forward.

I looked at the page.

It was an internal access log. Timestamps running down the left side, document names down the middle, a user ID repeated in the right column next to every entry.

The documents accessed were acquisition files. Financial projection reports. Internal communications between Callum and the board.

All of them accessed outside of normal working hours.

All of them over the last eighteen months.

I looked at the user ID at the top of the column and my stomach dropped completely.

"David Park," Callum said quietly. "Senior analyst. Acquisitions department." He looked at me across the table. "He was the one who brought your first assignment files to your office on your first day."

I remembered him. Fifties, grey hair, quiet voice, in and out of my office in under a minute.

"He has been here for nine years," Elias said slowly.

"Eight months ago he requested an access level upgrade for a project that was completed in six weeks." Callum tapped the page once. "The upgrade was never revoked. He has had senior level access ever since."

The timeline Elias had worked out in his head ten minutes ago landed differently now.

Eight months of senior access. Eighteen months of communications going to Castellano's people. Which meant Park had another way in before the access upgrade. Something lower level that still gave Castellano enough to work with.

"Jasmine knew." I looked up at Callum. "Maybe not his name. But she knew something was wrong with someone on that floor. That is what she was telling me."

Callum looked at the page. "We can't move on this yet. Not while the federal investigation is still being assembled. If Park knows we are onto him he will warn Castellano and everything moves before we are ready."

"So we watch him." Elias sat back in his chair. "Let him keep passing whatever he passes while we finish building the case around him."

"We also stop letting anything real reach his access level." Callum folded the page and put it in his inside jacket pocket. "Starting tomorrow the senior projections he can see are ones we control."

I looked between them.

"You want to feed him false information," I said.

"I want Castellano receiving exactly what we want him to receive." Callum held my gaze. "Until the investigation is ready to move."

The kitchen was quiet around us for a moment.

Then my phone buzzed on the table.

All three of us looked at it.

Matthias: I need to see you tomorrow. Not dinner. During the day. It's important.

I looked at the message and then at both brothers sitting on either side of me.

"He is done being patient," Elias said quietly.

Callum looked at my phone and then at me and his jaw tightened once. "What do you want to do?"

I picked up my phone and looked at Matthias's message for a long moment.

Then I typed back with both brothers watching.

"Tomorrow works. You choose where." I hit send and put the phone down. "Let's see what he thinks is so important that he can't wait for dinner.”