The morning air in the Fortunata estate was suffocating, heavy with a silence that seemed to hold its breath. Phoebe sat at the expansive dining table, her eyes fixed not on the spread before her, but on the elegant timepiece circling her wrist. The gold watch, once a symbol of status, now felt like a ticking detonator.
Her mind drifted ten thousand miles away, to a skyscraper in New York where Raymond held the strings of power. Could a man truly defy physics for a deadline? She wondered. The thought was interrupted by a sharp, rising wave of nausea that clawed at her throat.
"Miss, you've barely touched your breakfast," her housekeeper's voice broke the quiet. "Is it not your liking? I can prepare something else."
Phoebe looked up, her face pale but her gaze razor-sharp. "It's fine. I'm just feeling a bit under the weather."
"Perhaps some warm soup to settle your stomach?"
"No," Phoebe dismissed her with a sharp wave of her hand. "I just need a drink. I was going to ask for a hot cappuccino …" She trailed off. She was an amateur in the world of motherhood, and her medical knowledge was not yet deep enough to know if caffeine was a gamble she should take with the life growing inside her. Refusing to risk even a fraction of a percent, she exhaled slowly. "… actually, make it fresh orange juice. That will be all."
Desperate to escape the oppressive quiet of the house, Phoebe moved to the garage. She chose her Porsche, gripping the wheel with a white-knuckled intensity as she drove toward the city. To any observer, she was the picture of calm, but inside, she was a storm of calculations.
When she stepped into her office, Zara was already waiting, her expression a mix of hesitation and worry. "Miss, you look—
"Don't over-dramatize, Zara," Phoebe cut her off, dropping her bag onto the desk with surgical precision. "Act as if yesterday never happened. We work as usual."
Zara stood in silence, watching her boss open her laptop as if the weight of a transatlantic crisis wasn't looming over her head.
"Organize my schedule for today," Phoebe commanded, her voice dropping into its signature professional chill. "I want a full briefing and don't you dare cancel a single appointment because of yesterday's chaos."
Zara nodded, she knew Phoebe was a workaholic, a woman who had built an empire by sheer willpower. "Well, I'll immediately put together all the schedules today and give them to you."
*****
In the midst of reviewing her financial reports, a sudden thought struck her. Phoebe reached for her phone and dialed a secure line.
"Have you executed what we discussed last night?" she asked without preamble.
"Not yet, Miss. I was waiting for you final signal as instructed," the voice on the other end replied. "However, everything is staged. The system architecture is ready to go; we just need to flip the switch."
"Do it now! I'm on my way."
"Understood, Miss. Commencing immediately."
Time seemed to blur as she finished her tasks. When she finally stepped out of her office, phoebe was the picture of composure. She offered polite, measured smiles to her staff, her facade unreadable. She headed toward the heart of the company's infrastructure, not the general IT helpdesk, but the Core IT Command Center, where her elite specialists operated.
The room was filled with the low hum of servers. Phoebe greeted them formally, and they rose with deep respect. It was roughly 10:25 am.
"What do you have?"
The lead analyst shared a hesitant look with his colleagues before exhaling a heavy breath. "We've pushed as far as we could, Miss. This is the extent of it." He handed her a tablet containing a summary of their findings.
Phoebe scanned the screen her eyes narrowing. "This is all?" She looked up, her gaze icy. "You've tracked every rival I've ever pointed you toward. You've dug up backgrounds that were buried for decades. You are the team I trust most, why can't find him?"
"Miss, with all due respect, any other CEO's system could have folded by now." Another technician added. "But Raymond Rodriguez is different. We found the basics; CEO of multiple conglomerates, including Rodriguez Tech. a philanthropist, a genius investor with assets spanning continents, private ports, airports, and dominant shares in global tech firms."
"I don't need a summary I can find on Wikipedia or the cover of Forbes!" Phoebe snapped, her frustration boiling over.
"We understand, Miss. But if we attempt the breach his private servers any further, we risk a catastrophic counter-strike. Our company's security protocols will be exposed. They will know exactly who is trying to break in."
The room went silent, phoebe didn't flinch. "Do it."
The team looked at her in collective shock. "Are you certain, Miss?"
"I am. Execute the breach now."
She knew she was playing with fire, but she had read the signs, Raymond' obsession with her was his only visible weakness. If her company's name was flagged, she would bet everything on the fact that Raymond wouldn't destroy her. She would use his heart as her shield.
"Well? Is there anything else?" Phoebe's voice was taut, vibrating with a desperate need for a leverage she didn't yet have."
The lead technicians exchanged grim looks, their hands hovering over their keyboards as if afraid to touch them again. "Nothing, Miss. We've pushed the system to its breaking point. The only new data we've intercepted are the geographic coordinates of some of his offshore assets."
Phoebe felt a surge white-hot anger. "Argh!"
"I'm sorry, miss. I attempted to breach the private servers we usually use the track illicit money trails, the kind most billionaires use to hide their true net worth, but his records are pristine. It's nearly impossible for a man of his stature. He is clean … unnervingly clean for the sheer scale of wealth he possesses."
Phoebe leaned over the console, the fluorescent lights of the IT center making her pale skin look almost translucent. The headache that had been simmering all morning finally began to throb, and a familiar, bitter wave of nausea washed over her.
"So, you found nothing? No illegal transfer? No ties to underground organizations? No criminal record?"
"Zero, Miss. On paper, Raymond Rodriguez is a saint."
"But that's exactly what's wrong!" Phoebe snapped. "It's too perfect. I know there's something dark, something massive, hidden beneath all those layers of philanthropy."
The technician nodded slowly, his expression grave. "Your intuition is likely correct. Usually, there are two types of men who look this clean. The first are those who have a secret so deep it's never been touched. The second are those powerful enough to erase the very existence of their own secrets."
"And he isn't just one or the other, is he?" Phoebe guessed, her mind racing through the implications. "He's both."
"Most likely, Miss." The analyst replied. "But we can't find the proof. In fact, we've already tripped three silent alarm trying to dig deeper. If we continue, we won't just be knocking on his door, we'll be inviting him to burn ours down."
******
Phoebe left the server room, her heels clicking sharply against the marble floor, though each step sent a throb of pain through her temples. Whether it was the early stages of pregnancy of the mental exhaustion of chasing a ghost named Raymond, she couldn't tell. Back in the sanctuary of her office, she bypassed her desk and stared out at the Sydney skyline, clutching her phone.
"Hello? Phoebe Fortunata?"
"Yes, I am," she replied, her voice dropping into a tone of cold authority.
"Phoebe? It's been a long time. To what do I owe the pleasure of this unexpected call?" the man on the other end replied, sounding genuinely intrigued.
"Let's skip the pleasantries. I need your help."
There was a brief silence. "You need my help? That's new. I thought the great Phoebe Fortunata was more than capable of handling her own storms."
"I need your mind, Ren Robert! And I need your lack of ethics," Phoebe replied, her voice clipped and dangerously calm.
"Now I'm definitely interested. This sounds like more than just a business dispute. What is it?"
"I need you to hunt someone down. I'll send you the scraps I have, but I need you to find what lies beneath. I need the truth that doesn't show up on balance sheet."
"Phoebe … doesn't your firm have a world-class IT department for this?"
"I need you, Ren Robert!" she snapped her desperation momentarily bleeding through her professional armor. The weight of the urgency settled between them.
"Fine, send me what you have and tell me exactly what you're looking for. I'll see what's hiding in the dark."
"I'm sending it now. Thank you, Ren. I mean it," she whispered, her voice finally losing its edge as she hung up.
She immediately forwarded the encrypted files, everything her team had found on Raymond. Logically, she should feel a sense of relief knowing a specialist was now on the case, but her restlessness in her chest only grew.
She leaned her forehead against the cool glass of her window, watching the distant clouds. "Am I dealing with a deep-sea monster?" she murmured to herself. Her instincts, sharpened by years of corporate warfare, told her that Raymond Rodriguez wasn't just a man, he was an apex predator lurking in waters she wasn't prepared to swim in.