Velora
The next morning, the penthouse buzzed with energy, with Cassian pacing and Lyriel tapping on her tablet, very focused. They listened carefully as Velora laid everything out to them. The name Haynes Rosàrio stood in the air like a new imposed threat to them.
"Haynes Rosàrio." Cassian repeated with furrowed brows. "Billionaire CEO? What in the hell is this man doing on your radar?"
Lyriel's voice stepped in, after some minutes of tapping on her screen. "Owner of Rosàrio Enterprises…philanthropist…seems legit…no obvious ties to our kind of world." She glanced up, confused.
"Exactly," Velora said, pouring herself some coffee. "But he knew things. Louisa. Black Widow. Heck, he knew I was at the gala on a mission, he knew my job on Marcello was complete."
"So he's been doing some digging." Cassian mused. "The question is how? And how deep has he gone?"
"Too deep for comfort. Way too deep for comfort." Velora stated, taking a sip from the coffee. She continued, "That pen. Hope and Harmony Foundation. That was a damn breadcrumb. He wanted me at the gala. He's very strategic and calculated at what he does."
"Exactly. He knew you'd go back to the bar. This guy is playing chess while we are playing checkers."
"Damn right." Velora concurred. "So here's the thing. I need you both to dig into Rosàrio aggressively. Look for cracks, hidden connections. Someone powerful can't come out of nowhere without making enemies. He certainly has enemies, people willing to sell him out, look for them."
"Consider it done." Cassian said with determination in his eyes. "We'll leave no stone unturned."
"Good." Velora turned towards Lyriel. "Anything new on Lilith?"
Lyriel gave a deep sigh, pushing a strand of hair behind her ear. "Still circling. There's definitely someone pulling strings for her from above but no idea who, yet."
"Great." Velora muttered. Two ghosts haunting her at the same time. One from the past and the other brand new.
♧
Later that day, Velora decided to tap into her own network. With a reputation carefully cultivated over years, doors were opened easily to her. She had a web of informants, fixers and those who preferred to operate in the shadows. Tonight, it felt like the doors were forced shut.
She made a few calls and the responses were the same. Lack of recognition and blank stares.
"Rosario?" a rough voice on the other end of the line had asked. "Sounds like money. Money usually doesn't play in our box unless it's looking to get real dirty. And those types? They don't usually leave whispers."
Another contact, a woman with eyes that seemed to see through walls, offered a similar dead end. "Haynes Rosario… that name ain't ringing any bells, Vee. And trust me, honey, bells usually ring when someone like that steps out of line. Especially if they're sniffing around things they shouldn't".
Frustration gnawed at her. It was like searching for a particular grain of sand on the beach in the dark. Haynes Rosàrio seemed to exist only in those articles, not in the line of their world and business. It was either a very clean job or he was far above their usual concerns and so remained invisible. But neither of the options sat right with her. The man seemed like he could crawl up her back at any moment.
This wasn't her usual game. She was usually the one pulling the strings, the one with the answers. Haynes Rosàrio had flipped the damn scripts and she didn't like the feeling one bit. He knew her name, her middle name and her operation and yet when she tried to scratch the surface she found absolutely nothing. The ghost had a damn good hiding place and she had a feeling that finding him would be a lot more complicated than she initially thought.
At night, when she was about to succumb to sleep, her phone buzzed. Cassian. She answered, a sliver of hope flickering despite her exhaustion.
"Ve," his voice came out exactly. "I might have found something. It's thin, really thin, but it's a flicker of light in the dark."
Velora sat up, instantly aler. "Spill."
"Remember that file we stumbled across a while back? The one about the botched asset retrieval in…Chicago, was it?"
Velora's eyes squinted, the scene vague in her memory. "Vaguely. Years ago. Some messy ass business."
"Yeah. Well, going through some old cross conferences, I found a mention. A consultant was brought in on the tail end. Name listed? H. Rosàrio."
Velora was taken aback. Consultant? For the Syndicate? That didn't quite fit the billionaire CEO image.
"Consultant for what exactly?" She questioned, confusion etched on her face.
"No specifics. Just a note about 'specialized expertise' and a hefty payout. The file's mostly redacted, typical Syndicate bullshit. But the timing… it lines up with a particularly messy period for them."
Velora's mind raced. Chicago. Years ago. Haynes Rosario, a "consultant" for the Syndicate during a botched operation. It was a sliver, a damn tiny crack in the wall of polished perfection he presented. But it was something.
"Can you dig deeper on that file?" she asked, her voice hel a newfound urgency. "Anything else about his involvement? Who he was working with?"
"Already on it," Cassian replied. "Lyriel's got her digital claws in. It's old data, might be locked down tight, but we'll see what we can pry loose."
"Good." Velora hung up, the exhaustion momentarily forgotten. A connection. A damn link. Haynes Rosario hadn't just stumbled into her life; there was a history there, however buried. A history that involved the very organization she worked for.
She got out of her bed, the cool floorboards beneath her bare feet, a stark contrast to the sudden heat of intrigue that flowed through her veins. Chicago. A botched operation. Specialized expertise. What kind of expertise would billionaire CEO offer the Syndicate?
She walked over to the window, the city lights blurring in her unfocused gaze. The more she dug into Haynes Rosario, the more it felt like she wasn't just uncovering a man, but peeling back layers of something much larger, much more complex than she had initially imagined. It was like scratching at a seemingly smooth surface only to find a big and complicated puzzle hidden beneath.
And she had a damn bad feeling about what lurked in the deeper shadows.