Page 23 of The Broker

Enough.I don’t know why it matters if Dante goes out on a date.It doesn’t.It’s just weird for Angelica, that’s all. That’s theonlyreason I care.

Rosa’s waiting for me to respond. “Yes,” I say, ignoring the feeling of wrongness that fills me as soon as I agree. Enzo was right; I have to get over this phobia. Roberto was ten years ago. I refuse to let him impact my life from the grave. “When?”

“Are you free Saturday night? Cocktails and dinner, how does that sound?”

Ugh. That’ll take up the entire evening, more commitment than I was prepared for. But I’m determined to go through this. “Sounds like a lot,” I grumble, not bothering to conceal my grouchiness from Rosa. She knows my anti-social tendencies. “But fine, I’ll cooperate. Does he have a name, this friend of Franco’s?”

“Neil.”

“Neil. He’s not Italian?”

“Half-Italian. His mother’s English.”

“What’s his last name?” I ask, opening up a search window.

“Smith.”

“No way,” I say in disbelief. Neil Smith. Could his name be any more common? I’m not going to be able to get very far searching for him on the Internet. “I thought you said his dad was Italian.”

“I think he uses his mother’s last name. Valentina, are you doing a search on this guy right now?Come on.It’s dinner and drinks, and I will be right there, and so will Franco. We won’t leave you alone with him, I promise. Can you just wing it?”

The thought of winging it feels like setting out on a tightrope without a safety net. But it is extremely kind of Rosa to arrange this dinner. “Okay,” I say grudgingly. “Fine. You’re right. I won’t look this guy up on the Internet. I will come to the restaurant on Saturday not knowing anything about him.”

“Just like we did in the days before the Internet,” Rosa says encouragingly.

I roll my eyes. “Rosa, you’re twenty-five. You weren’t alive in the days before the Internet.”

She laughs. “True. But I’ve heard about them from my parents. Okay, see you on Saturday. I’ll meet you at your place?”

“No,” I say hastily. “I’ll come to your apartment.” I don’t want to explain living at Dante’s to Rosa. She’ll have a thousand questions about the arrangement, and I won’t have answers to any of them. And she’ll absolutely ask me if I have a thing for Dante. I definitely don’t, but I don’t want to get into it with her.

“Sounds good.”

We chat for a couple of minutes, and then Rosa hangs up, saying something about needing to sew up a sample garment. Like me, she’s a night owl. I go back to work. There are several random number generators that generate encryption keys. I just have to figure out which one Revenant used, and I’ll be able to read this data. I compile a list of every random number generator the hacker has mentioned on the forums and get to work trying each one.

On my seventh try, I hit gold. I generate a key and apply it, and file after file starts to decrypt.

Yes!

I’m double-clicking on the first unencrypted file when, suddenly, my monitor goes dark, and a chat window pops up on the screen. “Nice try, Valentina,” a cursor types. “But you have to work harder to get the better of me.”

Fuck. Fuck.Fuck.I’m frozen for a split second, and then my brain starts to work. I lurch for the power cord. I need to. . . It’ll take me too long to disconnect. . . Where is Dante’s modem? I’ve got to. . .Fuck.

I power down the Wi-Fi, but it’s too late. All the files I decrypted are gone. My laptop is completely corrupted. Everything is ruined.

But that’s not the worst of it.

Revenant knew my name.

Not my hacker handle.My real name.

Dante is going to flip out.

13

DANTE

Ihead back to work after meeting Giorgio. It’s almost midnight by the time I make it home. I have a faint hope that Valentina’s already asleep, but she’s not. She’s in the living room, slumped over her laptop. I glance at the TV and realize it’s just on for background noise. Unless her taste suddenly extends to blue cartoon dogs with Australian accents.