La Cosa Nostra

Chapter 11

Ever since my 4am talk with Luciano, I have been hyperaware of his presence. I find myself watching his movements a lot more, just being more aware of him when he's in the same room as me. And I find him watching me more too. It's as if that conversation changed the dynamics of our relationship, forcing us to deal and acknowledge with the emergence of these emotions. I hated it, hated feeling so off balance so I tried my best to just deal with it. Right now, I was in his office with Luca and Angelo, showing them the side project that I had been working on.

"Hey guys."

They look up at me, giving me their full attention.

"What's up?" Angelo asks.

"I have something to show you."

Luciano makes space for me to place my laptop on his table and offers me his chair. I mumble a 'thanks', trying to ignore the warmth he emits as he stands behind me, leaning over my shoulder to see my laptop screen. Luca leans against the desk while Angelo perches on the armrest, ignoring Luciano's glare.

"Get of my armrest, fatass. You're gonna break it."

"If the chair can handle your fat ass, I'm good."

I stifle a chuckle at Luciano's expression, clearing my throat before they start arguing or Luciano kills him.

"Can both your fat asses focus please?" Luca says tiredly, probably witnessing this all the time.

Luciano sends Angelo another glare with the latter responding with a cheeky smirk.

"What did you want to show us, dolchezza?"

"Right, so when Liam launched his cyber war on us, I tried to figure out how he could access your servers so easily. I mean, I know he's a hacker and all that, but there was something fishy about the whole thing. So, I did a little digging and realised that he wasn't attacking your main server, he was accessing your backup server and using that as a backdoor to your main server."

"Alessa, I love you and all but English please." Angelo says and I roll my eyes.

"When I first got here, I reinforced your main server making it basically impenetrable. That's why I got suspicious when Liam managed to get in so easily. You hired a security company to set up your server right?" Luciano nods and I continue.

"Every server has a backup server, in case your main server crashes. While the company cannot access either one of your servers, their mainframe does have the data for your backup server. Liam couldn't hack into your main server thanks to my coding but he could hack into the company's mainframe and get the data to access your backup server."

Understanding dawns on their faces as they connect the dots.

"So, I fixed it. I know I should have asked first and I totally understand if you-"

"Alessandra, how did you fix it?" Luciano says, his tone amused.

"I kinda rebuilt your whole system."

"Whole system meaning?"

"Meaning everything. I developed a firewall program a few years ago and it's what CCC uses as well. It's more secure then the CIA and the NSA. I created a separate backup server that is not linked to the security company's mainframe. You shouldn't have any security breaches from now on."

"Wait, what about the server that's linked to the company? What about the data?" Luca asks.

"Oh, I entered some bullshit data in there to fool whoever's hacking to distract them from the fact that my virus is erasing all their data and frying their hard disc."