The SUV came to a halt at the front of a hidden warehouse.
Hidden at the sublevel of the warehouse was the safe house.
Alessia Pov
This place is so quiet and peaceful . Devoid of the sight of humans only distant screeching of birds.
"Welcome to my quiet safe house;The grid. You need a quiet place so I brought you here. I hardly use this one." Valerius spoke behind me.
'What does he mean he hardly use this one does he have others'
"You have others? I asked before I could stop myself.
"I'm not the ghost for nothing. I have different safe houses in different locations in the country and around the world."
"Looks like you take your work seriously."
"I do. So now let's get down to business."
My mind reeled with the reason I came here. I was still wearing my lab coat and my mask but in it I felt less like a surgeon and more of a target.
Valerius moved to his laptop, his gaze steady and hands so fast like it was gliding above the keyboards.
The burner phone in my pocket beeped and on the screen I saw the encrypted message from Marco.
"Donna, the members of the board are restless. Dante is calling for an emergency meeting other than the one scheduled. They say a leader who disappears for hours when a meeting has been scheduled isn't worthy of being a leader. And as a woman you should know your place.
You have three hours to show your face or they make their move and overthrow you."
I scoffed . I haven't been able to wipe off the trace of my identity from a man's phone and now the greedy board members of my father's organization are thinking of making a move because I'm a woman and unfit to rule.
Valerius Pov.
My head snapped up immediately when I heard Alessia scoffing.
"Lyra what's wrong?"
She gave me the phone.
Her hands are tightening around her coat.
She spoke up, her voice still cold despite the threat.
"It's not just the photo that's the problem. The wolves in the Mafia want me out of my seat. If that image hits and they know my face … they will execute me for knowing the face I've been trying so hard to hide. They will follow me everywhere I go. Even though I'm the Spiritus Cheetah I can still be killed Lucian. No matter how fast I am, a bullet is faster."
I stretched out my hands brushing it softly over hers reassuringly. For a woman that keeps everything in and behaves like a queen she was still worried.
She looked at me for a while drained of the strength to argue or snap at me then looked away.
I returned my hands back to the laptop
"I won't let it hit. A few minutes left and I'm done. I just have to do FRP."
Alessia's eyes snapped up.
"What do you mean?"
"It means factory reset protection. Just have to do a remote factory reset and account password change for his cloud."
My hands were already working on it.
#adb shell recovery --wipe_data
I moved to the phone's Mac address and turned the speed to 0.05kb per seconds.
And then the upload bar of the man's phone stopped at 30%.
What's the progress?"
"The last interesting part which will make the phone useless."
I executed a black hole making sure the photo is sent directly into the void.
# ip route add blackhole [TARGET_PHONE_IP]/32.
The phone's IP address blinked once and turned grey.
"Finally done?"
Alessia asked again, already impatient.
"The main part."
I continued again. I wasn't done yet as the Ghost I never leave traces.
I accessed the network internal logs; the record and info of every command I just sent.
# rm -rf /var/log/syslog && history -c
The lines of the code vanished and was replaced by a blinking cursor. Anyone who tries to look at the network will think the phone just died of a hardware attack unknown to them it was hacked.
"Now I'm done."
I started typing again and Alessia spoke up again.
"You are still typing and you said you are done."
"I'm scrubbing off the relay forensics which means I'm erasing traces. If I don't, a smart forensic tech from Norway could trace it back to this place."
I hit the final key and within a few minutes everything was gone like I was never there.
Alessia breathed a sigh of relief.
"I know you have been wondering how I knew your name and call you often. How I knew you were the one in the hospital if you were facing backwards. Last night at Sotto L'etna… you went into your suite but the door wasn't completely locked. I was passing by and your mask was off."
Alessia's Pov
I stood up, my hands shredding the coat.
"You looked exhausted but you still carried yourself like a queen. Today at the hospital I knew you were the one with the way you carry yourself. Don't let anyone tell you a woman is unfit to rule. I saw the face of the woman who is the reason why the Vincenzo empire is still standing. Even with the weight of the responsibilities on your shoulders you still perform well in whatever you do and I'm sure you know that….
The beeping of the alarm stopped me midway. On the screen of the monitor was the figure of four men.
"The hit squad?" I asked.
"Yes. The Mafia council cleaners."
"They came to make sure the head of the Vincenzo empire never reaches the board meeting and I will be dethroned."
In the next ten seconds Valerius reached into a drawer pulling out a silenced submachine gun.
"They are about to find out the Ghost and the Cheetah are active."
His stance and eyes were cold. The man I only know as my advisor and hacker was gone, replaced by another side of raw hunger.
"I'm ready." I replied ready for the men who were sent to stop me from defending my seat.
"Stay behind me doctor. The surgery is over for the photo. Now we perform the autopsy of men."
Authors Note.
Thank you Spiritus Cheetah for reading this chapter.
Well the answer to Alessia's thought of him admitting he has seen her before the hospital has been given by Valerius.
Valerius used his hacking skills as the ghost to make a man's phone completely useless so no more trace of the photo.
The Surgery is over and now they perform the autopsy.
Chapter 8 is a chapter of actions.
As the book reaches the chapters meant for actions the word count increases too. This early chapters are just to make you understand the dynamics and reason for many things to come later.
Stay Lethal,
--Cruentis.