Love In Crimson

Chapter 14- Ace and Kieran

Ace was working on some files when his phone rang an alarm. The alarm belongs to one of the camera that was installed in his house.

Ace connected the server to his monitor and it's screen flickered to life, casting a pale blue light on his face.

The feed showed Camera 4, the camera in the study. It had a neat and precise feed.

Ace installed it behind the air vent three months ago and never told anyone. No blinking light, no wire hum. Just a perfect view of the desk, the drawers, the safe panel hidden beneath the floorboard and the shelves.

If someone came for what was in here, they’d assume they were alone.

The feed showed Natalia sneaking in and making her way to the obvious places first. She didn’t even check for cameras, silly woman.

Ace watched her going particularly for files and folders, like she knew exactly what was she wanted.

Ace didn’t move. He just watched, fingers steepled under his chin. He was somewhat amused. He saw her as weak and fragile but her curiosity is dangerous.

He watched her rummage through contracts, papers ,files and the rest. Ace let her. He’d placed them there himself .Bait for the curious.

While watching the camera feed of the library the night she began to arrange it, he realized he might have slipped. How could he forget that he had such confidential files in the library. Well, maybe she'll be useful in the long run, who knows.

Ace had not expected that Natalia would be brave and curious enough to rummage through his study but he never ruled out the possibility. Since he lived alone, he had always left them open. Cameras were only in the house as a safety precaution.

After fumbling with the keypad for the safe, he watched her go through another set of files.

Then her fingers stopped.

At the desk, tucked beneath some files, was the folder. The one labeled TARGETS . He’d put it there this morning, not knowing she’d get this far if he left the study door unlocked.

Ace’s thumb found the button with a bell drawn in red circle on his phone screen. Then he hit the button.

From the speaker hidden in the study wall came a sharp, mechanical beep-beep-beep. Not the building alarm. Not loud enough for that. Just enough to sound like a motion sensor had tripped. Enough to make her think that she's in trouble.

Ace watched her every reaction. Her hand jerked back from the folder like she’d touched fire. Her head snapped and she muttered something under her breath, chest rising fast.

Ace tensed in his chair, watching her weigh her options. Stay and risk it, or leave and try again later.

She chose later. Well, that was an easy feat. Maybe she wasn't so strong willed after all

With one last glance at the study, he saw her dropping the files and left the study.

Ace let out a slow breath and put off the monitor.

“Not yet, and maybe never” he said to no one but himself.

She can't get to see that part. He needs to make sure that all important files are locked away from the curious cat. That folder named TARGET consisted of recently concluded investigations that left even Ace confused about her identity. What a bastard Benedetto is, he thought to himself.

Ace rarely used his office for certain conversations anymore. It seemed too public and vulnerable.

Instead, most of his high-level meetings took place inside a private building hidden in the Da Silva Corps headquarters.

No one except selected few knows about this place. It was a steel and glass structure with no company logo and tinted windows thick enough to hide shadows. It was built with high level technology. It also had a lot of electrical gadgets and equipments.

Only six people had unrestricted access. Ace, his lawyer a.k.a head of legal operations, Scott his right hand man and three members of his private operations team.

One of them was Kieran Holt. He mostly heads private investigation matters for Ace. Both of them have been friends since high school. Kieran is still one of the very few capable of talking back at Ace.

Kieran stood near the conference table scrolling through security reports when Ace was busy on the monitor.

Keiran is tall, lean and permanently irritated, Kieran had worked for Ace for nearly eight years. Unofficially, he was Ace’s personal assistant.

He always made sure that every operations was executed perfectly.

“Your screen time is up man,” Kieran muttered without looking up.

Ace lifted his gaze from the monitor slowly. “Oh, I didn't realize. I assumed you could wait five extra minutes.”

“Touching” , Kieran said

Ace ignored his remark and tossed a file onto the table. Kieran finally looked up. The amusement vanished from his face immediately.

“Where did you get this?”

“Inside source.”

“That’s not an answer.”

Ace sat down calmly. “It’s the only one you’re getting.”. Kieran took a deep breath as the arrogant man in the same room with him.

Kieran exhaled sharply before opening the file. Several photographs spilled across the table. Warehouse images, shipping records, internal transaction logs and at the center of it all - Orchid Group.

Kieran’s jaw tightened.

“That bastard Benedetto is more cunning than we thought.”

“Yes.”

“And his board members?”

“Still divided.”

Kieran cursed under his breath.That was bad, very bad, he thought aloud.

Ace was confused, does divided board members not mean that they have easy access to infiltrate?

“No”, Kieran said. He continued. “A divided board means instability. Instability means panic. And panic makes dangerous men reckless. Especially men with enough money to erase bodies”!

Ace leaned back slightly, watching the digital screen mounted on the wall as financial charts rotated across it. “Talk to me.”

Kieran nodded once and pulled another folder closer. “We confirmed three shell companies connected to Orchid’s offshore accounts. All routed through Cyprus and Luxembourg.” He flipped pages carefully.

“But that’s not the problem.”

Ace’s eyes narrowed slightly.

“The problem,” Kieran continued, “is internal affairs.”

Ace went still. There it was. The real issue he still had. He has not had any major breakthrough in infiltrating Orchid's Group internal affairs.

Every major corporation had one. It's a department designed to investigate internal corruption, leaks, fraud and misconduct. Most companies used it for damage control.

But Benedetto uses his own like a weapon. The people that make up his internal affairs division are notoriously brutal. It's filled with former intelligence officers, corporate investigators, and private security specialists who specialized in destroying threats before they reached appropriate authorities.

Which meant that breaking into Orchid Group itself wasn’t the hard part. Surviving Benedetto's internal affairs was. The family merger plan was now seeming useless to Ace.

Kieran slid a photograph across the table. “This is the newly appointed director after the previous one resigned.”

Ace picked it up and read the page attached to the photo. Mayor Hale, mid-fifties, former military intelligence officer with glaring cold eyes. The kind of man who looked more comfortable holding a gun than a conversation.

“He replaced Mercer?” Ace asked.

“Three weeks ago.”

“That’s early.”

“Exactly.”

Ace studied the photograph silently. Mercer had been predictable. But this new person will make matters worse because unpredictability complicates things.

Kieran crossed his arms. “You still planning to go ahead with your traditional plan?”Ace looked up slowly.

“Yes.”

“Even after this morning?”

That made Ace pause briefly.

“She knows enough to become curious,” Ace said calmly. “Not enough to become dangerous.”

Kieran gave him a skeptical look. “That girl can be smarter than we might think.”

Ace’s gaze darkened slightly. “I know, I didn't rule out the possibility.” Silence settled over the room for several seconds. Then Kieran sighed, holding in what he wanted to say for later and activated another large monitor on the wall.

A blueprint appeared instantly. Orchid Group Headquarters. Thirty-two floors, underground archives, restricted financial servers and buried deep inside the building lies the internal affairs.

Ace stood and approached the screen slowly. “Archives, what about them?”

“Well, sublevel two,” Kieran replied. “with biometric access only.”

“What about the server room and security rotations?”, Ace asked

“Well the server rooms have separate clearance each and their security rotations is every six hours.” , Kieran replied.

Ace studied the layout carefully. It appeared too clean and controlled. Which meant there were hidden layers they still hadn’t uncovered.

“There’s more,” Kieran added grimly. Ace glanced at him. “We intercepted communications between Mayor Hale and someone from Benedetto's office.” Ace’s expression hardened instantly.

“When?”

“Yesterday morning.”

“And?”

Kieran hesitated.

“That’s the strange part. They weren’t discussing money.”

“Then what were they discussing?”

Kieran slid another transcript across the table. Ace scanned it quickly. Most of it was coded language. References to asset transfers.Then one sentence caught his attention. The girl cannot discover the succession file.

Ace’s jaw tightened. So the succession file existed after all. He had planned to look more into it with Kieran after the private

investigators delivered the file to him . Turns out that Natalia has an identity

that Benedetto is working desperately hard to bury.

Kieran watched Ace carefully. “You think it’s about her inheritance?”

“It has to be.”, Ace said.

“But why hide it this aggressively?”

Ace didn’t answer immediately. Because he already knew the truth, or at least part of it.

“I think that old hag and his accomplices are scared,” Ace said finally. Kieran frowned. “Of Natalia?”

“Not really, maybe scared of something we don't even know about”, Ace said with his eyes still fixated on the screen.

“And do you think Natalia’s connected to whatever they’re hiding”, Kieran said.

Ace still remained a fixed gaze on the monitor. “Well,yes.” His plan is not to save any hidden heiress, if it turns out to be the case. He's seizing Orchid Group and making them pay for their sins,and that's it.

“So what do you intend to do with the lady after all this”, Kieran asked Ace. Ace said nothing because that question had become controversial for him.

Kieran noticed the silence immediately and groaned. “Oh, no.” Ace’s gaze sharpened. “What now?”

“You’re hesitating.”

“I’m thinking.”

“That’s worse.”

Ace looked unimpressed. Kieran pointed at him accusingly. “This is exactly how terrible decisions start.”

“She’s not part of this operation”, Ace said almost like he was convincing himself.

“She’s literally the center of this operation”, Kieran retorted.

“She’s leverage,” Ace corrected coldly while Kieran stared at him like he had grown seven heads, then he snorted and said “Sure.”

Ace’s expression darkened again with Kieran's remarks. “Be careful.”

“No, seriously,” Kieran continued. “You married the daughter of a dead owner to a company we're working so hard to take our revenge on, she lives in your house as your wife, and now we discovered hidden inheritance linked to her that we're not even sure about yet, and due to your carelessness, she now knows that something is definitely going on and now you’re glaring at me because I noticed you’re emotionally compromised?”

Ace stepped toward him slowly with his hands in his pockets “Kieran.”

“Right, shutting up”, Kieran said raising his

two hands in the air like a criminal asked to surrender.

But now, even the enigmatic Ace wasn't sure of himself. Because Ace now fears one thing , and that was the possibility that Kieran might be right after all.