Chapter 3 - Enter Pickles, and a New Alliance
The next morning dawned gray and miserable, matching the mood inside the penthouse.
Hannah was sitting at the massive marble kitchen island, wearing a pair of soft gray sweatpants and an oversized cashmere sweater that belonged to Dante—an outfit that somehow made her look remarkably small and defenseless against the backdrop of industrial luxury.
Suddenly, a loud, indignant *MEOW* echoed through the penthouse hallway.
Heavy footsteps approached, followed by a familiar, furious scratching sound. Evan appeared around the corner, holding a heavy-duty plastic pet carrier at arm's length as if it contained a live bomb.
"The beast," Evan announced grimly, "is angry."
Hannah leaped off her stool. "Pickles!"
She unlatched the carrier door, and out strutted a seventeen-pound orange tabby cat with a face that looked like it had survived multiple street brawls and a deep-fryer accident. Pickles let out another booming, raspy meow, surveyed the multi-million-dollar Italian marble kitchen with utter disdain, and immediately rubbed his shedding orange fur against Dante Vance’s expensive leather shoes.
Dante, who had been reviewing a tablet of encrypted financial data, looked down. Pickles looked up, locked eyes with the ruthless mafia boss, and head-butted his ankle.
Evan braced himself, expecting his boss to kick the animal across the room. Instead, Dante slowly crouched down, extending a single, large finger. Pickles sniffed it, decided Dante was acceptable, and began purring with the deep, rumbling engine sound of a chainsaw.
"He likes you," Hannah said, amazed. "Pickles usually bites strangers."
"Pickles has good taste," Dante said, scratching the cat behind his torn left ear. He stood up, looking at Hannah with an expression that had shifted into something much more calculated. "Now that our furry consultant has arrived, we need to talk business."
"I am not in the mafia, Mr. Vance," Hannah said, crossing her arms defensively.
"No, you're an accountant with a photographic memory for ledger discrepancies," Dante replied smoothly. "Which makes you infinitely more dangerous to Victor Kearney than a dozen of my gunmen. Arthur left us a puzzle, Hannah. These files on the thumb drive are encrypted using a proprietary multi-layer cipher. We tried cracking it last night. Our tech guys hit a dead end."
Hannah raised an eyebrow. "Your multi-million-dollar criminal syndicate doesn't have a good hacker?"
"We have several. But Arthur was old school. He used a custom ledger-balancing algorithm based on double-entry bookkeeping rules from the 1920s." Dante slid the tablet across the island toward her. "An algorithm only an obsessive, old-school bookkeeper would understand."
Hannah looked down at the encrypted screen. Columns of numbers, seemingly random alphanumeric strings, danced across the display. She stared at them for three seconds.
Then, her professional instincts kicked in.
"Oh, for heaven's sake," she muttered, grabbing a stylus. "Arthur didn't use modern software. He used a modified Luca Pacioli method. Look at column C—the debits and credits don't balance unless you apply a seasonal depreciation curve based on Chicago real estate values from the 2008 crash."
Her fingers flew across the tablet keyboard. Lines of red text flickered, turned yellow, and suddenly dissolved into a cascading waterfall of green data.
The decryption progress bar hit 100%.
A massive, comprehensive spreadsheet bloomed across the screen, detailing every shell company, numbered Swiss bank account, and bribed federal judge on Victor Kearney's payroll.
Silence descended upon the kitchen. Evan whistled low under his breath.
Dante leaned in close, his shoulder brushing against Hannah’s. His breath was warm against her ear as he whispered, "Remarkable."
Hannah swallowed hard, suddenly very aware of how close he was. "I just unlocked a multi-million-dollar criminal conspiracy before my morning coffee," she whispered back. "My therapist is going to have a field day with this."
Suddenly, the security monitor mounted on the far wall flickered to life. A camera feed from the ground floor showed three black SUVs pulling up outside the Vance tower. Men in tactical gear, bearing the insignia of Kearney’s private security detail, poured out of the vehicles.
Dante’s cell phone buzzed violently in his pocket. He pulled it out, glanced at the screen, and his jaw tightened into granite.
May you like
"They found us," Dante said softly.
***
