Gambling Debts 9/?
Chapter 9
"You do know that he's lying, don't you? " Derek said. Next to him Stiles nodded as if he thought the same.
"Are you sure?" Isaac asked.
"Dude." Stiles cut in. "There's a reason we have separate poker tables for werewolves."
"Question is." Stiles continued. "Is he lying just to cover his incompetent ass or is he covering up something bigger?"
"What do you mean with bigger?" Isaac asked. The same question was on Derek's mind but he figured it wasn't his place to ask. Derek doubted that this was a big conspiracy a la Hollywood, though. Probably just an idiot who didn't know how to do his job.
"No idea." Stiles let out a frustrated groan.
"I'll talk to Boyd." Isaac said. "Let him have a look at his file."
"Just keep it quiet." Stiles reminded him. "I don't want this to become a big deal before Derek had a chance to have a look at what's really going on with our system."
With that it was settled.
Derek and Stiles wanted to head up to the penthouse for a late dinner but when they left the conference room, Isaac held Derek back. He was pretty sure that Stiles noticed them falling behind but he just kept on walking.
"I don't know what kind of arrangement you exactly have with Stiles." Isaac said in a low voice. At least he seemed to be past the point where he thought that Stiles would rape him. "But this is not part of that. You don't have to help us here."
"I want to help." Derek said.
"I'm going to talk to Stiles about at least paying you for your help." He said and for a moment it looked like he was about to sprint after his boss to talk to him right now.
"Thank you, but Stiles and I already had that talk." Derek said. Stiles was paying him way to much as it was.
However, he made a mental note to talk to Stiles about what he should or shouldn't tell Isaac and Boyd. For now they might be okay with their arrangement even if they didn't know the details but once the rumors would start for real, Derek wasn't sure what they would think. Especially Isaac seemed to be really concerned about him.
Derek and Stiles had only time for a few bites of their sandwiches while they got dressed for the mingling part of the evening but Derek wasn't really hungry anyway. And he wasn't really looking forward to jumping into the crowd but it was part of his job so Derek put on one of his new suits and then followed Stiles down to the pit.
The casino was as loud and crowded as always but it wasn't that bad anymore. Looked like he slowly got used to it. He wasn't sure if he liked it.
Today Derek followed a few of conversations going on around him with interest and he kind of enjoyed it when they stopped at one of the poker tables where an intense game was going on. The stacks were high and there were two all-ins before they had a winner.
The people gathered around the table cheered when the final hand was shown and the winner drew her chips towards herself with both arms. There was no need for that, the dealer would have stacked them neatly for her but Derek got that she enjoyed making a show out of it. Judging by the amount of chips on the table, she deserved it.
Stiles congratulated her to the win and got her and her friends champagne on the house.
"Everybody loves a winner." Stiles mumbled to Derek when they left the table. Apparently it was now a lucky table and people were almost throwing fists to get a seat there. Derek didn't want to know how much money the casino would make off of this table in the next hour alone. Even if this one woman had been lucky, in the end the house always wins.
They went back to their suite in the early morning, beat and exhausted, but Derek fell into his bed with a satisfied smile on his face.
The next week went by in a blur.
Stiles only took him to the most important meetings, one of them the weekly get together with the Executive Board which turned out to be a bunch of snobby assholes who treated Stiles like the scum of the universe. They completely ignored Derek which he was fine with but he was pretty sure that at least a few had already heard the blooming rumors and for sure he didn't like the looks some of them were giving him. He doubted that it would help Stiles' standing with them but on the other hand Stiles didn't have a standing with them to begin with. That much was obvious after a two hour meeting in which all they discussed was if Stiles' decisions over the last week would ruin them or not.
"They treat you like a toddler." Derek commented once they finally left the conference room. "Especially that Ennis guy."
The man was a werewolf and there had been a brief stare-down when Derek had entered the room but they were both betas so as long as their alphas weren't in a war they would get along. Derek didn't know which pack he belonged to, there were four permanently in Vegas, but due to the unique situation in the city with werewolves visiting from all over, they all had learned to be more civil with each other than other packs in less confined places would consider normal.
"He's the loudest voice telling me to just give up and sell the Red." Stiles let out a sigh. "His alpha's girlfriend owns the Alpha Pack and she would love to buy the Red."
"Aren't there rules against something like that?" Derek wondered. "I mean how can he make objective decisions for the Red with a background like that?"
"Believe me, I would have kicked him out the second I took over the Red but I need the majority of the Executive Board for that and they all miss the good old days where they could do whatever the hell they wanted and since Jennifer Blake can't be in two casinos at the same time they think they can get that with her."
That name rang a bell.
"That's Kali's pack."
"Yep." Stiles let the word pop. "Do you know her?"
"I've never met her but she basically owns Vegas." He paused when he noticed Stiles' confused expression. "From a werewolf point of view at least." He clarified. "Her pack is the biggest, you can find one or two of her pack members in almost every casino. She tolerates the other three packs but one alpha is Peter and the other two packs aren't much bigger than ours. We're no threat to her."
"I have two of her werewolves in my staff." Stiles admitted. "Mostly security for the werewolf tables but they're good at spotting cheaters in general."
"I saw them on the floor." Derek nodded. They hadn't interacted but they had acknowledged each other.
Aside from the meetings Derek had two more fitting sessions with Lydia until he finally had his own tailored Lydia Martin suit. He wasn't sure on which occasion he should wear it, though, he had more than enough suits for his job already, but Stiles assured him that there would be occasions like a grand opening where he would like to wear something like this.
Derek put the suit in the back of his closet.
Lydia hadn't threatened him again but he wasn't sure if that was a good sign or not. Had she heard the rumors already?
Most of the week Derek spent with Isaac, working on cleaning up their system. Like he had suspected, it wasn't just done with updating it to the latest version. Andrew was clearly a moron who had no idea what he was doing but some of the things Derek found weren't just dumb mistakes.
Derek's advantage was that he knew the system inside out and he had Erica only a call away with tools at hand specifically designed for this system. He had to call her twice over the week and in the end he had to agree to meet her over a coffee to tell his story. At least he managed to put that off for another week. Seeing the mess he was dealing with, she understood.
Isaac was a big help too. He didn't know much about the computer stuff but he helped with sorting through the levels of classification and he gave Derek access to everything he needed. Which in the end was literally everything. Derek now had the same classification as Stiles, it was kind of scary.
However, Isaac didn't seem to be worried about that, he trusted Stiles' gut when it came to people.
Over the week Derek got to know him a bit and he liked the dry sarcasm the younger man let show once they had warmed up to each other. And he kind of gossiped about their boss, it was nice.
"Never watch a mystery thriller with him." Isaac warned him. "He points out the bad guy after five seconds of screen time."
After a week Derek had the system up to date and had untangled most of the things Andrew had tempered with over the years.
"I don't recommend letting him back into the system." Derek said when he presented Stiles and Isaac his results.
"Don't worry." Isaac said darkly. "He gets fired first thing tomorrow."
Derek nodded to that not sure how to approach the other things he had found.
"He might not be our biggest problem." He finally said.
"What do you mean?" Stiles looked up from his phone where he had taken notes.
"I found a program that doesn't belong there and I've no idea what it does." Derek admitted. He was good at what he was doing, he knew that, but he wasn't a hacker. There were limits to his abilities and he had reached them here.
"Can't we just delete it?" Isaac ask. "Or, I don't know, put it in quarantine or something? Like a virus?"
"It has connections to other programs, that much I can tell." Derek said. "I don't know what will happen if I start poking at it. I can't even have a real look at it because I can't access it."
"You have access to everything." Isaac reminded him.
"Not to this one." Derek shook his head.
"So we don't know if it's just spying on us or if it's doing something like siphoning money to somewhere else. Awesome." Stiles slumped back in his seat. "Or if it's something like a time bomb that can knock us out at any moment."
All valid ideas and Derek couldn't rule even one of them out.
"I have a friend at Casino Solutions." Derek finally said. He wasn't sure how he had gotten this involved and bringing her in was probably not a good idea but he liked Stiles and if he could help him …
"Erica, the one who helped me once or twice over the last few days." He directed the last part at Isaac who confirmed it with a short nod. "She's better with the hacking stuff. I'm going to see her next week, I could ask her to have a look."
"An outsider might be a good idea." Isaac pondered while Stiles already said: "Do that."
They agreed to keep this a secret for now. Since Derek was sure that he hadn't triggered anything with his work they were fairly certain that whoever was behind this didn't know they had found his program.
Boyd would have a little chat with Andrew before he fired him for incompetence. He hadn't found anything fishy about him so they were kind of hoping that Andrew would let something slip. It was a slim chance but it was all they had.
"If this program has to be updated to be compatible with the new version we might get a lead." Derek offered.
"So we're hoping that there's somebody else on our staff who can't be trusted?" Stiles got immediately what he meant.
"Or they already have a backdoor to our system." Derek added.
Chapter 10
Masterpost