Chapter 3 - The Dinner of Wolves
By seven o'clock that evening, the private dining room on the fiftieth floor of the Cross Tower had been transformed into a pressure cooker.
Gabriel had called an emergency executive dinner under the guise of reviewing quarterly logistics projections. The mahogany table, long enough to seat twelve, was currently occupied by only four people: Gabriel sitting at the head, looking like an executioner at a coronation; his COO, Marcus Vance, a silver-haired, impeccably groomed veteran of corporate warfare; his lead legal counsel, Evelyn Thorne, whose sharp green eyes missed nothing; and me, sitting quietly near the foot of the table in a borrowed black silk blouse and tailored trousers provided by Gabriel’s personal shopper.
My leg throbbed beneath the tablecloth, but the pain was nothing compared to the roaring furnace of rage in my chest.
“I must admit, Gabriel,” Marcus Vance said, swirling a glass of 1982 Bordeaux with practiced nonchalance, “calling an emergency summit over routine Q3 shipping variances feels somewhat melodramatic. Even for you.”
“It’s not routine, Marcus,” Gabriel said smoothly. His voice carried across the silent room like crushed ice. “We have a discrepancy in our secondary asset logs. Someone has been siphoning operational data through an encrypted backchannel connected to our offshore accounts.”
Evelyn Thorne didn't blink, but her fingers paused for a fraction of a second against the stem of her water glass. “An internal leak? That’s highly irregular. Have you notified compliance?”
“Compliance is currently sitting at this table,” Gabriel replied, his gaze shifting slowly from Evelyn to Marcus, and back again. “In fact, the data trail points to a very specific digital signature. A private encryption key used exclusively by the executive committee.”
Marcus chuckled, though the sound lacked true humor. “Surely you aren't suggesting that someone in this room—someone you’ve trusted for a decade—is responsible?”
“Trust is a luxury I stopped affording myself a long time ago, Marcus,” Gabriel said softly.
He reached into his jacket pocket, pulled out a heavy gold-plated tablet, and slid it across the polished mahogany surface toward the center of the table. The screen lit up, displaying a complex web of financial transactions, IP addresses, and routing codes.
“This,” Gabriel continued, “is the decryption ledger recovered from the flash drive Miss Harper delivered to my office last night. It details every unauthorized transfer, every compromised shipping route, and every dollar funneled into the accounts of the Chicago syndicate.”
Evelyn leaned forward, adjusting her gold-rimmed glasses. Her face remained a mask of professional serenity, but a thin sheen of perspiration had appeared along her hairline. “This data looks... fabricated. Where did you source this, Gabriel? Some disgruntled accountant with a grudge?”
“The accountant,” I spoke up for the first time, my voice cutting through the heavy air like a scalpel, “is sitting right here, Mrs. Thorne. And she verified every single byte against the live server logs before she walked out of your building.”
Evelyn’s head snapped toward me, her green eyes flashing with a sudden, venomous hostility. “You are an interloper, Miss Harper. A temporary auditor brought in on a probationary contract. You know nothing of how this firm operates.”
“She knows enough to trace the private encryption key back to its origin server,” Gabriel interrupted, his tone dropping into a dangerous chill. “Which registered an outbound data packet from an IP address located on the private residential floor of this very building—at 2:14 a.m. three nights ago.”
Marcus Vance went entirely still. The glass of wine stopped halfway to his mouth.
“Gabriel,” Marcus said carefully, setting the glass down with extreme precision. “Are you accusing one of us of treason?”
“I’m not accusing anyone, Marcus,” Gabriel said, standing up slowly from his chair. “I’m presenting the evidence.”
Before anyone else could speak, the heavy oak doors of the private dining room swung open. Two armed security guards stepped inside, flanking a pale, trembling figure in a cheap gray hoodie.
Toby.
My heart leaped into my throat. I stood up so fast my chair screeched against the floorboards. “Toby? What is he doing here? You said he was safe!”
“He was safe in a secure safehouse in Lincoln Park,” Gabriel said quietly, never taking his eyes off Marcus and Evelyn. “Until my men intercepted an encrypted text message sent from Evelyn’s private terminal directing a syndicate hit squad to his location ten minutes ago.”
Evelyn stood up so fast her chair toppled backward, crashing loudly against the Persian rug. “That is a lie! A complete fabrication!”
“Is it?” Gabriel asked coldly. He pressed a button on his remote, and the wall-mounted projection screen behind the table flickered to life.
An audio recording began to play.
“...just make sure the girl doesn't reach the Cross Tower with that drive,” Evelyn’s cold, crisp voice echoed through the room. “If she tries to hand over the ledger, plant the weapon on her brother and let the syndicates finish it. Cross will never know the difference.”
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The silence in the room became absolute, suffocating, and absolute.
Marcus Vance slowly pushed his chair back, his hands rising defensively. “Evelyn… what the hell have you been doing?”
