Page 8 of The Broker
He nods. “Salvatore hasn’t left me any other choice. I’m putting you in charge, Dante. Figure out how to take Bergamo with a minimum of bloodshed.”
We haven’t expanded our territory in many years. I’m not going to lie—a part of me is looking forward to the challenge. “I’ll take care of it,” I promise.
“Good.” He turns to Valentina and says something that makes my smile vanish. “Dante told me you went to Bergamo and retrieved some of Verratti’s data files.”
She lifts her chin in the air. “I did, Padrino, but I haven’t yet succeeded in decoding them.”
“But you will. I’m impressed by your initiative, Valentina. I want you to work with Dante on Bergamo. Do what you can to destabilize Family Verratti. Hack into their data, disrupt their organizations from afar, siphon off their money so they can’t make payroll, that kind of thing. Yes?”
Valentina shoots me a triumphant glance. “Yes, Padrino.”
So much for keeping her safe and out of the line of fire.
5
VALENTINA
I’m in a great mood as I leave the padrino’s office. Antonio Moretti thought I showed initiative going to Bergamo. He’s confident that I can hack into the Verratti files. He’s got faith in me. After the last few frustrating days, it’s nice to feel appreciated.
Even the fact that I’ll be working closely with Dante on my next assignment can’t derail my good mood.
Outside the office, I turn to Dante. “Listen, about Bergamo. Salvatore Verratti has hired a hacker. Anyway, we have to go on the offense—”
“No,” Dante interjects harshly. He lookspissed.“Absolutely not. If you think the padrino just gave you the green light to do as many stupidly dangerous things as you want, I have bad news for you, Valentina. You workfor me,and I haven’t changed my mind about your involvement. I can take over Bergamo on my own.”
I see red. One hot, angry thing after the other explodes through my mind. I try one more attempt. “It won’t be as easy as you think, but we can set an electronic trap for Revenant. I think—”
He holds up his hand, his expression closed off. “You’re not listening to me, Valentina.”
I grit my teeth. I’m not listening to Dante? It’s him who’s not listening to me. I’m not sure if Dante thinks all his problems can be solved with his fists or if he underestimates how much damage a motivated hacker can cause.
Either way, it’s time for an object lesson.
I look around. Leo and Joao are having an animated conversation about pasta in the break room, and Tomas is trying not to laugh at the two of them. I walk up to the trio. “Hey, can you guys come to the conference room for a second? Bring your laptops, please. You too, Dante.”
There’s one problem with good data security. It’s invisible. Nobody pays attention when their data is safe, so they tend to overestimate how protected they are. But part of my job is penetration testing our own network, and every week, I get in at least half a dozen times.
When everyone’s seated around the table, I look at Dante. “If I show you that I was able to hack into all of your accounts, will you listen to me?”
He raises an eyebrow. “I follow your guidelines,” he says confidently. “Maybe you can hack into their accounts, but not mine.”
It’s going to be glorious when I get into his account. I’mreallygoing to enjoy the next five minutes. “Want to bet?”
He leans back in his seat. “Sure,” he says. “Do your worst.”
Arrogant asshole.
I survey my targets. “Tomas, you got an email from Antonio on Wednesday night asking you for your opinion on an investment opportunity. Antonio sends emails at all times of the day, so you didn’t think anything of it, and you clicked on the link. Only one problem: that email wasn’t from Antonio, it was from me. I installed a keylogger on your computer.”
I press a key, and Tomas’s screen goes dark. Then, a cartoon monkey dressed in a yellow raincoat dances across the screen, carrying a banner that says, ‘You’ve been hacked.’
“Ouch.” Tomas makes a face. “That was stupid of me.”
Tomas is a nice guy, so I don’t rub his nose in it. “Onto Joao. Sorry, Joao, you were even easier. You wanted to watch a Brazilian soap opera last Saturday, so you installed a free VPN on your home computer.” Joao winces, knowing where this is going. “Unfortunately, the program you chose has a security flaw big enough to drive Dante’s Ferrari through. You didn’t install it on your work computer, but since you log into work from home. . .”
The hacker monkey waltzes across Joao’s screen.
I turn to Leo. “Joao wanted some help with a presentation. He put it on a USB key and gave it to you. You trusted him, so you plugged it into your computer. Only problem? Joao was already infected.” I press a key, and the monkey dances on Leo’s screen. “You’ve been hacked.”