Posted 2022-01-14; Beta'd by Eeyorefan12
Having set in motion the plan intended to prove his loyalty, Edward had been assigned to work under Peter's supervision for the past three days. So Edward was doing this morning, tapping out a key code onto his keyboard while Peter watched over his shoulder.
Peter was very nervous, and he had good cause to still be so. Nearly ten months after his "accident-related" promotion, he was still underqualified and less than confident in fulfilling a role that only death, prison, or advancement would free him from. There were no other ways out of Mafia service, Aro's at least, and the first in the list of options was more likely to occur than the last.
"What're you doing?" Peter asked Edward.
Edward closed his eyes and exhaled. "I'm opening the network monitoring system. The one you should be using to screen for incursions and policy violations." He turned to face him. "You asked for my help. I'm trying to help. I'm not going to abuse your administrator privileges. What would be the point?"
Peter chuckled nervously.
Edward skimmed through the logs. "You are checking this regularly, right?"
Peter's gaze slipped sideways.
And that would be a no.
Edward turned back to the screen. "You were down for about an hour two weeks ago?"
"Yes." Peter sounded even more anxious than before.
Edward kept his voice low. "Did you source the DDOS?"
"No," Peter whispered, swallowing, sitting down in the chair beside him. His hands trembled.
Edward was pretty sure Peter hadn't told Aro about the electronic attacks either. No one wanted to give a man like Aro bad news, especially when the consequences of such an action might be fatal.
Edward leaned forward and wiped his hands down his face, speaking so that only Peter would hear. "I can't do what Aro wants me to do if you aren't doing your job. Do you need me to show you again?"
As expected, Peter nodded curtly, glancing around to see if anyone else had noticed this telling exchange.
Edward murmured his request, supposedly so as not to draw attention to Peter's oversight. "Can you authorize me?" he asked, looking over his shoulder towards Peter's workstation. Edward's sat at the front of the room, visible to everyone behind him. In theory, his being in view kept him in line. Practically, it was pointless. Human eyes were often lazy ones. The only people with enough know-how to understand his work were seated right behind him but either too busy or indolent to pay him more than the most cursory attention. Edward had never been so happy to have his prior work prove so ineffectual in changing attitudes. The Morandi organization's cyber-security program wasn't just a sieve, it was a giant funnel.
"Si," Peter said. He walked the short few steps to his computer, and while he did so, Edward opened a tiny terminal window and executed the code required.
Bingo.
The window was closed by the time Peter turned around.
Edward spent the better part of the hour walking Peter though the best practices he'd tried to establish before. Peter's grasp of the material was nominal, his understanding of the theory behind it even more pathetic. The execution—well, good Lord.
When most of the men left for lunch, Edward remained, the only other men with him grumbling at the required babysitting duty. They were extraneous to Edward's security team and resentful for being held back to do what they openly complained was pointless surveillance. Edward had been given the most limited access to their network—or so they thought. Their faces were faintly visible in the reflection of his several screens and the shaded windows fronting the room. As they turned away to eat their lunch, Edward sat at his computer, launching the command terminal again, pulling up the keystroke log from Peter's machine. Sifting through the code, he found the passwords required, almost scoffing aloud when he realized that even this minor infiltration hadn't been required: Peter had disabled the network's requirement for routine password changes.
"A damn miracle," he mumbled, thinking of how lucky Aro had been so far. It was no wonder the Cullens' shipment had been seized. With five lines of code, Edward activated the Trojan horse he'd installed the prior year. This executed three primary commands, one of which would become very obvious to all involved very quickly.
Edward drank his water and ate his sandwich, chewing and swallowing mechanically. Waiting.
As if set to a clock, the door to the office opened, and Aro and Antonio entered, the latter looking incredibly worried, agitated, and sweaty.
"Your people are most certainly confused, Antonio. I'm sure there's been a communication error." Aro turned to Edward. "Where's Peter?"
"Oh, at lunch, I think?" Edward said. He held up the other half of his sandwich.
The room was a bit more crowded now, both Aro and Antonio's personal security having arrived. The ease Edward had seen between the two groups had dissipated. Aro's men and Antonio's stood on opposite sides of the room, their postures stiff.
Good.
Aro barked at one of his security guards, who scurried away to find Peter.
The ringing of Antonio's phone broke the uneasy silence next, the equally uneasy man answering. "Si?" The voice on the other end of the call was loud and distressed. Antonio's face registered first confusion and then anger. He jabbed his finger towards Aro. "This is no mistake. Once yes, but twice? Three times? What are you playing at?"
"I am not playing at anything." Aro turned on Edward, who shrugged.
"I have access to nothing but what Peter gives me. On your orders, remember?"
Aro narrowed his eyes. He didn't believe him, and Edward didn't blame him.
Told you, you bastard.
"Ask them," Edward said, jerking his head towards the men behind him. "They've been watching me the entire time. If there's been a breach, it didn't come from me."
The two junior operators glanced nervously at each other. "Eh—si," one of them said. "He's been monitoring network activity. Nothing else."
At least, that's what Edward was supposed to be doing. How useful it was to be able to rely on the languor and nerves of Aro's employees.
"You can blame it on whoever you want, Aro, but the outcome remains the same." Antonio turned and left, his security team following.
"Secure the building," Aro told his guard, lowering his voice. "We need to get to the bottom of this. Don't let them leave." He walked out of the room, moving in the direction opposite the one Antonio had taken.
No, Aro wouldn't want Antonio leaving in a disgruntled state, would he? The man's cooperation was essential to the success of the Morandi operations, which were already hanging by a thread.
A pale and perspiring Peter scurried back into the office, followed closely by two security guards, one of them with his hand on his gun.
Visually checking with his own armed shadows, Edward stood, pretending to wince as he put his hand to his stomach. "Uh, bagno?" They nodded, following him to the closest restroom. As usual, one man stayed outside the door while the other walked in with him.
Unlike the other bathroom adjacent to the security office, this one featured helpfully large and openable windows. When Edward pulled down the sash on one, his escort shook his head, moving as if to close it. Edward waved his hand in front of his nose and then looked towards the stalled toilets. The man frowned a little but nodded, turning away to head back to his post at the door.
Amateur.
Launching himself forward, Edward clamped a hand over the man's mouth from behind and slammed his opposite fist into the nest of nerves below his guard's ear. It worked beautifully; he caught the unconscious man under the arms before his body hit the floor and dragged him into one of the stalls. Taking a second to make sure he really was unconscious and that his partner wasn't suspicious—at least not yet—Edward stripped the man of his gun, phone, and earpiece.
That was the easy part, Cullen. Now for part two.
Lifting himself up and through the window, Edward slid down the other side, dangling and then dropping the half story to the exterior gallery below.
Though he was partially shaded by the tilt of the winter sun, he was within easy sight of any of Aro's sentries—if they were turned his way. Edward walked at a casual pace along the length of the building, turning inside and stepping into one of the meeting rooms. Squeezing into the corner by the door, he stayed still, knowing that if he wasn't off camera, he'd at least be in enough of a shadow to not be obvious to anyone watching. This relative invisibility wasn't his primary cover. No, he was listening for that.
He didn't have to wait long. After a few minutes, he heard angry voices bouncing off the main entrance's marble walls. Antonio was trying to leave. It sounded like his demands were being loudly countered. With both Antonio's and Aro's men armed, and the suspicion of fiscal treachery afoot, it was only a matter of time before the bullets started to fly.
When he heard the first pair of men running in the hall and calling security codes into their earpieces—his pilfered one included—he stepped into the hall and began running. A voice crackled in his ear, demanding radio silence unless Il Falco was in mortal danger. Edward kept running, knowing he wouldn't be questioned. The first security closet he came across was still locked, but the second wasn't. Donning a harness and a vest, he holstered two pistols, hooking the sling of a semi-automatic over his shoulder and making sure the magazine was full. Aro's and Antonio's men weren't playing around, and now neither was he.
However, unlike everyone else in the building, Edward was leaving. The occupants of Aro's fortress would be sitting ducks for what came next.
With his back to the wall, Edward paused, gun in hand, closing his eyes and sending up a silent prayer. Then he recentered his focus on his primary objective—the only one that mattered: I'm coming, Bella.
Then he turned into the hall, ducking when he heard the first, "Fermare!" There was a half-second between the shouted word and the first crack of a gun. A bullet ricocheted near his head. Crouched around the corner, he returned several shots, a loud cry telling him he'd hit at least one person.
As to his status in the growing confusion, he still wasn't sure. Either he'd been missed and his cover was already gone, or he'd been shot at by one of Antonio's men. He couldn't risk checking; time was of the essence. If Aro were to decide Edward was behind this, Bella would be in even more danger—at least until he could get to her.
If you can get to her.
He brutally rejected the negativity, redirecting his thoughts. It was a hard-earned skill, this constricting of all his focus, narrowing it to the mission at hand, but if there was any certainty in battle, it was that thoughts of anything but would lead to failure.
He would not fail.
His route out was through the garden. Its even slope took a sharp tumble down to a high retaining wall, this sitting beside one of the service roads. With three corridors, two stairwells, and three doors to go, his exit was tantalizingly close.
But close was no guarantee of safety, and his route would intersect with the one Aro's men were taking, if they knew what they were doing.
Edward sincerely hoped they still didn't, having planned his route around what had been a consistent weakness: Aro's security.
He sprinted down the first corridor, flattening himself against the wall of an alcove when he heard more footsteps coming his way. Yes, Aro's people were very busy and would soon be so on two fronts. If his and Jasper's research had been effective, the Italian federal forces should be onsite in a very short time. Even so, he needed to use the chaos he had now before anyone figured out what he'd done. The guard he'd incapacitated would have woken up by now, and while his sharing the information would be hindered by radio silence, it wouldn't be entirely stopped.
Edward cleared corridor two without obstacle, but as his exit came into sight below, he found it guarded by two heavily armed men. He crouched behind the railing, narrowly avoiding being seen. Unfortunately, they were blocking his exit.
Then he saw why.
Aro.
He was behind his chief guard, Marco, cowering into the cover provided by one of the curling staircases. Edward had only a partial view, blocked as it was by the stone baluster. Across from Marco was Vito, scanning for threats. Both of them had their guns drawn.
The moment brought with it a familiar sense of detachment, like Edward was watching a film. Everything slowed down—the men's movements, his breathing—everything but his thinking. That raced onwards, playing out for him the two most likely and terrifying outcomes possible: Aro dead at his hands but with Edward following after in a hail of bullets, or escaping the villa, getting Bella to temporary safety, then dealing with repercussions that would plague him for years to come.
But there was another outcome possible now, wasn't there? One that he hadn't considered truly feasible until this moment—having come upon his mortal enemy so meagerly guarded.
If evil wasn't the self-centered black hole of Aro's ever-consuming greed, it wasn't anything. As long as Aro was alive, he would come after Edward and his family, even from federal custody. But if he could end him now and survive—
"Cullen! Bastardo!"
A bullet whizzed past him—and then another.
He'd been spotted.
"Shoot him!" Aro's voice was a high pitched shriek, a counter against Marco's more sensible urgings to leave the scene. Aro stepped forward, away from the cover of the stairwell but still behind Marco, and pointed at Edward's position. "Kill him now!"
Edward ducked as Marco's bullet shattered the railing above him.
His decision made, Edward dropped the pistol and pulled the rifle from his shoulder. Flipping off the safety, he steadied himself against the wall, aiming center mass and taking his shot. When Marco went down harder than he'd expected, blood painting the stairwell behind him, Edward realized the man had given his vest to his employer.
Shit.
Two more shots from Vito whistled past his head in rapid succession but Edward barely registered them; his target was in his sights, frozen in place and staring at him with an expression of incredulity. The pounding of Edward's heart was syncopated against the pinging of the shells bouncing on the stone floor, and he took a purposeful breath before he squeezed the trigger a second time. A head shot was his only option, and the bullet caught Aro almost dead center between the eyes, his head jerking backwards before his body slid almost gracefully down the wall and collapsed to the floor. With his slack face and chin resting on his chest, Aro looked like he could have been sleeping.
Now came the hail of bullets Edward had expected as Vito advanced on his position. Someone else was shouting. He couldn't tell who, and he didn't wait to find out, scrambling upwards and bolting down the hall away from where he'd come, taking cover behind the door of an open room.
As he slowed his breathing, he ran through the building's schematics in his head. Vito was likely still between him and his way out, no doubt gathering people to hunt him down.
There was another way, but it would take him directly through Sulpicia's rooms.
Bald-faced lying or dying, Cullen.
Lying it was.
The door to Sulpicia's sitting room was locked. Hoping to God that the Morandi security was lax all around, he yelled out the code word, "Gelsomino!" If it was still right, and someone was inside, they'd know to let him in.
Like a miracle, the door opened, revealing a frazzled looking Sulpicia. "Quickly!" she hissed, slamming the door behind him as he entered.
"Where are your men?" he asked, scanning the room for threats. Would her team know yet? Did she know?
"Outside." She pointed to the way Edward had come before eyeing the gun in his hand. He holstered it. "They brought me in from the garden and told me to stay here. What's going on?"
She was still in the dark.
Aro had left his wife unguarded, and any scruples Edward might have had over the man's death were easily set aside.
As he verified that they were indeed alone, he let that sink in, carefully calculating precisely how useful Sulpicia could be. Not very, he surmised, at least as a hostage, but she might be valuable in other ways.
"Antonio's men have turned on your husband. Stay here and stay on the floor. You'll be safer that way." It wasn't untrue. As he moved around the room, he noted that someone had at least had the sense to close the blinds. "Where are the exits? I need to make sure they're secure—all of them."
And please let there be one I don't know about.
Sulpicia pointed to the obvious routes out. All of them would leave him vulnerable. Then she looked at him intently, and he recognized in her carefully disguised gaze the shrewdness that he used so well himself.
She was sizing him up as much as he was her, and he felt a sickening jolt, recalling their encounter in the hall the other day—and knowing he had to use it.
"Please," he said, putting his hand on hers. "Antonio's called in his own men from outside the compound. There are no safe exits and . . . it kills me to know you're in danger. I need to get out to bring in whoever else I can find."
Sulpicia's hand turned to grasp his. "You will come back, yes?"
"Yes." He'd do a damn strip tease if she'd show him the way out, and given the way she was looking at him, she bloody well might ask for that—or more. He lowered his voice, trying, though it repulsed him, to speak seductively. "Clearly I'll have something waiting for me when I do."
She shivered—and not from fear. "This way," she whispered.
Concealed under the thick rug she showed him was a trap door. "It leads to the garden sheds by the service road."
Right where he needed to be.
Before he could stand from his crouch, Sulpicia launched herself at him, but not in the type of attack he expected. No, hers was all lips, the kiss so violent and possessive that, although he didn't pull away, he shuddered in revulsion.
She interpreted his movement otherwise. "I will see you later, mio bel tesoro."
Her words felt like both promise and threat together.
He bolted down the narrow stairs, speeding through the dim tunnel until he reached what he hoped was an entrance to the garden shed. Sulpicia could have been lying. He listened carefully, and hearing no tell-tale sounds above, secured the rifle and redrew the pistol, releasing the safety. Pushing up the trapdoor a fraction of an inch, he waited again, this time preparing for any fight that might come his way. There was nothing in front of him.
Slamming the cover open, he pushed himself up and out, scanning for assailants; there were none. Quietly closing the trap door, he'd turned to replace the foam mat his arrival had dislodged before realizing that the action was unnecessary. Even if he had a reason to get back in, Sulpicia wouldn't be keeping his escape route a secret after learning what he'd done.
Feeling slightly rueful, he wiped at his mouth. Yeah, she wouldn't consider him her "beautiful treasure" for much longer.
Peering out of the shed's small window, he had a side-view of his route to the road. This final leg would leave him the most exposed, but if—and it was still a damn big if—his plan had worked, he'd be free and clear. Aro's men would be focused on keeping Antonio's men from leaving or wasting time searching the villa for Edward—clueless about what else was coming for them.
But if his plan hadn't worked, he likely wouldn't be worrying about anything ever again.
Briefly closing his eyes, Edward uttered another urgent prayer and then elbowed open the door, running flat out for his destination. Out of his line of sight, he didn't see the car approaching the other corner, barrelling in his direction right as he jumped from the wall into the vehicle's path below.
Erin and Eeyorefan12: Yeah, yeah, we know. And we're not even sorry! ;)
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