I pounce before she can backtrack. “Why in the hell is Sentinel helping the Italian Mafia take down legitimate Russian businesses?”
There’s no way she doesn’t know what I’m talking about. She gazes out the window now. The street below is bustling with people trying to get in and out of buildings, buying coffee, shopping at the boutique store across the street. But I doubt she’s seeing anything but her own deception.
“How do you know that?”
“Because Sentinel might have written the program …” Her eyes widen but she doesn’t deny anything. “But I’m following its tentacles.” Cutting them off one at a time, more like it. Even if they regrow as fast as I do.
She laughs. “You can’t beat it. Hell, I can’t beat it, and I helped dream it up.” She pulls out a chair and falls into it as if the lies aren’t holding her up anymore. “I wanted to tell you, but Peyton made me swear …”
Bingo.
Peyton did it.
Peyton wrote the virus.
I should’ve known—tech genius, secret skills, no accountability to anyone about what he’s doing or how he’s spending his time… It all lines up so perfectly.
There’s something else, too. Something I missed earlier.
As I look at Leila, her face reddens to a deep brick color. And I grasp the other big secret. It’s so obvious I can’t believe I didn’t see it before.
“Wait… Leila, you didn’t. You couldn’t. You slept with Peyton?”
Normally, that would be the headline for our day. Today, I have to choose between Bosses Fornicating in Secret, and Tech Start-up in Bed with Italian Mafia. Either way, it’s tawdry. But she just shrugs like it’s no big deal.
It isn’t my business or why I fought to come into work. I stare through the frosted glass of the conference room out at Evgeni’s outline. He’s so rigid and silent that it makes me feel like ants are crawling over my skin, but I also don’t have any desire to see him lying in a puddle of his own blood if the Italian mafia decides to add some real-life oomph to this computer virus.
“We’ll circle back on that later. Tell me about this program.”
She runs a nervous hand through her hair. “Some big Italian guy in a black suit with slicked-back hair and sunglasses came in a couple weeks before your wedding. All friendly and buddy-buddy.” She shrugs. “But those guys are never as nice as they seem. I don’t even know how it happened. Girl Scout’s Honor. But next thing I know, Peyton calls me into his office and tells me what we’re doing. Then he and I are working late every night, and sometimes the guy and his friends come back to check in on us…”
She shudders like she’s remembering a horrible nightmare, then folds her hands on the table in front of her to stop them from trembling. “
I can’t quite believe what I’m hearing. “So let me get this straight: an Italian mobster comes in and demands that you and Peyton help him take down their enemies, and you just agree?”
She shakes her head vehemently. “They knew stuff about me. They had pictures, details… We couldn’t say no, Cor.”
“Why didn’t anyone tell me about it?” And by anyone, I mean her.
“When you were hired, Peyton did a background check. A real thorough one. He does them on everyone. And since Tomas’ family and businesses are the target …” That math isn’t hard to figure.
We’ll get to the target in a minute. “Did I authorize a background check?” Just how deep did they go that Peyton knows about a ten-year-old relationship?
She nods. “It’s hidden in your contract. In everybody’s.” Her voice, along with the shrug, says it’s no big deal. But it’s so big, I can’t even …
“I want to see that file.” My fingers drum against the table frenetically.
“I can’t get that. It’s locked in Peyton’s desk.” Which tells me she tried. Another nerve-grating detail I file away to be upset about later.
How could she? How could he? How could they?
She won’t look at me, and I don’t want to hear some sad, he-tricked-me story. I’m not going to get anything else out of her. She’s a wreck, face blotchy with shame.
I stand and fling the door open, marching down the hall, past Evgeni, to the stairs. By the time I get to Peyton’s door, I’m one angry huff away from an explosion. I don’t even bother with a knock.
He lifts his head and sits back as I storm in. “Corinne.”
This calm, cocky bastard. “What did you do?”
“What are you talking about?” But he knows. His eyes go dark and his hands clench.
“What do they have on you? What kind of leverage?”
His entire face pinches. There’s something to be said about what truth can do to a person. It reveals what you are underneath.
And Peyton right now looks ugly as sin.
“None of your business.”
He closes his laptop and stands to walk around his desk, then leans back against it. He’s going for cool and casual, but the effect is the exact opposite. He looks more like a rat caught in a trap. His body’s too stiff. Too controlled.
“Your business is the programs I assign to you. You do what I say. What you agreed to do when signed your contract.”
“If they’re blackmailing you…”
His face flashes an angry red. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You know exactly what I’m talking about. And what I’m trying to tell you is I might be able to help you—if you help me.”
16
Tomas
“Say it again. Slower.”
Corrine puffs a fallen strand of hair from over her face, takes a deep breath, and begins the story from the top. She talks fast and waves her hands a lot when she’s worked up. If this wasn’t a conversation about the deadly serious existential threat facing down my Bratva, I might even be inclined to call that little nervous habit cute.
But things are serious. Very fucking serious. What she’s telling me is that her own boss is the one responsible for Flash Bomb. It’s a vicious coincidence that the Italians would choose him. That, in a weird way, they’re the ones who brought Corrie back into my life.
When Corinne told me that, my first instinct was to storm the offices of Sentinel Security and bash Peyton Wilson’s head against his desk until he doesn’t have a face anymore. In fact, I was already checking my pistol magazine to make sure it was full before Corrine managed to tell me that she’d already put a plan together.
“You what?” I’d said to her.
“I figured it out.”
The gist of it is this: if the Bratva agrees to provide some physical security at Sentinel to safeguard against the Italians swarming in, then Corinne, Leila, and Peyton will write an addendum to the program that’s attacking our businesses.
“And that addendum will do what?”
“A bunch of techy mumbo-jumbo you wouldn’t understand.”
“Make me understand then,” I growl. My trigger finger is still itching to make this Peyton Wilson pay for what he’s done to the people I’m supposed to be protecting. He’s harmed innocents, civilians just trying to make an honest living. He deserves to suffer for that.