The Monster In Us

10- thING of the past

Almost the entire week goes by without incident. I continue my work, I make small talk with Denise, I report back to my father and I keep digging through the Berardi file system as much as I can. It's a slow process but that was expected, that's why my father had put me in the Berardi clan in the first place, so that I'll have a long term position within the company to hack away at it slowly but with time.

Dante Berardi is a thing of the past. I don't even see him as I'm going through the halls of the building or up on the roof when I'm on my lunch break. It's good that I don't see him at all because as I've stated, he isn't really important to the Berardi operation. He's his father's puppet, it'd be much more beneficial to get to Giovanni than it would be to get to Dante.

I'm not saying that I'm going to ask Giovanni on a date, that old Italian raisin would probably shoot me before I got through the door, and I'm not going to try to seduce him. I know that it's what my father wants because he thinks that if I give the old man some head under his desk, he'll absentmindedly leave me alone in his office and I can get into his computer, the real gold mine.

I won't do that though. Well, I won't do that until my father explicitly tells me that I have to but it hasn't come to that yet. As long as I'm producing a steady stream of progress, I'm in the clear.

On Thursday, I am sitting at my desk right after my lunch hour is up, finishing up some refactoring on the client database when there's suddenly a giant hand slamming onto my desk. Not in a loud fashion but it's very abrupt and it makes me look up from my computer screen to see Dante towering above me.

I internally groan. Just when I thought that I had gotten rid of him.

"We have a problem," He states and without saying anything else, he stands up straight and starts leaving the room. Denise is smiling at me and when she sees me looking back at her, she winks. As if she thinks that this is Dante's way of hooking up in the janitor's closet or something like we're horny highschoolers. She knows that there's nothing going on between us though. We went out that one last weekend and barely spoke since so if he needs something from me, it's obviously business related.

"Follow me, Miss Boner," Dante calls to me from by the doorway when I just stupidly sit in my seat without any real reaction to his proclamation. Without skipping another beat, I grab my computer bag and stand up from my seat. I ignore Denise grinning at me as I bustle toward Dante to see what it is that is so urgent.

He's walking so fast that it's almost hard to keep up with him despite the fact that I'm not even wearing heels. He's very tall and his legs are long so his strides are about twice as long as my own. He doesn't even look back to see if I'm keeping up with him though, he just leads me all the way down the hallway and then into the room across from his office. It makes me pause at the door for a moment, suspicious as to why I'm here but when I finally turn the corner into the room, I feel relieved that I'm not the only other person in the room.

There are three very disgruntled older men wearing their penguin suits sitting around a table. I don't want to be the first one to speak but I also need to know what's going on and nobody seems keen on updating me. Considering I was just dragged away from my afternoon lull, I would like an explanation.

"What's going on?" I finally ask, inviting myself to sit down at the circular table at the only seat that's left which unfortunately seems to be right beside Dante.

One of the men turn on the overhead projector in the room and after it takes a moment to turn on, it shows a picture of a rat on the projection which is attached to one of the men's laptops. Looking at the URL, I can see that it's supposed to be the homepage of the Berardi website for the casino and hotel but clearly, it's been hacked. And considering back home, we refer to the Berardis as rats, I'm assuming we are the culprits.