Chapter 13 - THE THIRD VECTOR
At 4:00 AM inside the central server room beneath the Citadel, red operational lights blinked in rhythmic, silent patterns.
Gabriel sat before his primary terminal, his face illuminated by the sharp blue glare of diagnostic codes scrolling across six screens simultaneously. His fingers hovered above the mechanical keyboard, motionless.
Nico walked into the cold room, tossing an apple from hand to hand. "You've been staring at those packet dumps for three hours, Gabe. Did the Swiss trust drop a decimal point?"
"No," Gabriel said, his voice flat and analytical. "Someone attempted to ping our legacy server at the port terminal four minutes ago. They used an old encryption token that hasn't been active since 2021."
Nico stopped tossing the apple. "Whose token?"
"Arthur Sterling's private office key," Gabriel replied, keying in a sequence that isolated the origin point. "The query didn't come from Sterling's office, though. It came from a secure server located inside the St. Regis in Chicago."
"Julian Vance," Nico said, his eyes narrowing. "He’s trying to retrieve old shipping manifests from before Elena’s marriage."
"He’s not just trying to retrieve them," Gabriel said, pulling up a secondary diagnostic trace. "He already has the hard copies. Richard Cole kept a physical ledger in a safe deposit box in Gary, Indiana. Vance’s men picked it up six hours ago."
Nico let out a low whistle. "Old school paper. No digital backdoors to wipe."
Dominic entered the server room silently, his shadow stretching across the polished concrete floor. He didn't ask what was wrong; he simply stood behind Gabriel, listening as his brothers laid out the threat.
"If Vance hands those physical ledgers to the federal commission, it creates a regulatory headache that could stall Elena's riverfront construction for eighteen months," Gabriel explained. "It won't break us, but it will freeze her capital."
"Where is the ledger right now?" Dominic asked.
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"In a armored transport heading east on Interstate 90, bound for a private legal vault in Washington D.C.," Nico answered, checking his tablet. "Two armed guards. Scheduled to cross the state line at dawn."
Dominic adjusted the cuffs of his shirt. "Matteo is already in Chicago for the banking conference. Call him. Tell him Elena’s project is not to be delayed by a single day."
