What I get is glorious nothing.
Shuffling. Footsteps.
Click.
Koyn
“Want some company, Prez?”
I tear my eyes from my computer screen, blinking several times to wet my eyes, and then glower at Stormy. “I’m working.”
“Same as every day for the past two months,” she hedges, eyes narrowing as she steps closer to my desk. “You did the right thing, you know? Letting her go.”
I crack my neck, trying to ease the tension there. “What do you want?”
“Can’t I just want to hang out?” she asks, turning on her Southern charm as she sits on the edge of my desk.
Her eyes flit to my screen but there’s nothing to see there. The moment I heard her voice, I flipped out of the screen I was working on. What has my hackles raised is why the fuck she keeps looking at it. Stormy’s a nosy bitch, but sometimes it goes beyond that. If I had more proof, I’d say she was a rat.
The thought of having a rat at my compound makes me want to rip the heads off any motherfuckers who even dare to think about crossing me.
“It’s snowing,” she says in a pouty tone. “It’s boring.”
“Where’s Filter?” I ask, casting a glance past her into the hall. “Or do you care anymore?”
This gets her attention because her back straightens. “Of course I care.”
“You’re awfully cozy with my brother lately. What did you call Copper?” I smile evilly at her. “Oh, that’s right, you like calling him Jeremy.”
I lift my brow, waiting for her to lie to me and tell me he told her.
Her face goes blank. “Krista called him that a while back. It just slipped out when I was mad.”
I cross my arms over my chest and study Stormy. She has this beautiful biker bitch vibe going on, but she’s not stupid. In fact, her eyes always gleam with intelligence. It’s why she and Filter have always been a good fit. He’s smart as hell too. I just hope she’s not smarter than him. That could be a problem.
“Where did you say you came from again?” I ask, cocking my head. “Afton?”
She bites on her bottom lip. “I said it was a small town outside of Afton.”
Smart girl.
Cover your tracks.
“Hmmm.” I rake my gaze down her front, inspecting every detail. I want her to know I see right fucking through her. She’s stuck her nose in my business one too many times and now I’m fucking suspicious. “Get me Halo and go find someone else to bother.”
She flashes me the fakest smile ever. “On it, Prez.”
The moment she’s gone, I go back to what I was working on. Obsessing over Genworth. I should be focused on Putnam because he’s ghosted once again, but I can’t let go of the uneasy feeling. Copper says it’s because I want to keep the girl. Maybe. I just have a hunch. Something I can’t quite put my finger on it.
I flip open Genworth’s network and continue my combing. His firewall was airtight as fuck, but I needled my way into it because that’s what I do. What I’ve always done. What I’m really fucking good at. I analyzed the setup and located the soft areas right away. Once I found them, I wormed into it. His network is beautiful. I admire the handiwork of someone similar to myself, who is obsessed with perfection and order. Everything is airtight. For everyone else. It’s admirable. I locate his contracts right away with the NSA. His hands are dipped into about every pot available. It’s no wonder he’s a billionaire. I skip past all the obvious stuff and start looking for the hidden stuff. A man like Genworth is a man like me—we hide in plain sight. His deepest, darkest shit won’t be in some file labeled: Don’t Touch. It’ll be in something regular and orderly.
A folder stands out and seems to blink at me.
November 2009.
I rub at my chest over my shirt where my tattoo is. I try desperately not to think about that month or that year. But just seeing it has my heart clenching painfully.
The file is corrupt inside the folder.
Or so it seems.
It’s hidden behind a file named November_2009.error and from the looks of it to just anyone, it’s unusable and broken.
I’m not just anyone.
I pretty much wrote the fucking book on this shit.
Quickly, I rename the file to an exe file. When I open it, it blossoms like a rose, revealing to me hundreds of video clips, recordings, documents, screenshots, pictures, and more. What has my blood freezing in my veins is the name on the first picture I see.
Koynakov.
I click the picture open to find my old building in downtown Houston. The next picture is my Escalade. Another is a headshot I had on my website. So many pictures of me from when I was the owner of my company all those years ago. My stomach turns when I find a picture of Ellie at the gym. Ellie at the store. Ellie on the front porch.
What. The. Fuck.
It gets worse…there are multiple pictures of Blaire.
At the salon. At school. At the movies.
Why in the fuck does Genworth have all this shit on my family?
Tears burn my eyes as I stare at my daughter. So innocent and young. She didn’t fucking deserve to die. I choke on a sob, grief threatening to suffocate me, and drag every goddamn file off his network. I don’t just copy. I take. I take what’s mine. I replace the file with a dummy one encrypted with a virus that will blow his shit up if he even thinks of trying to open it. Once I have it off his network, I start combing through the entire folder. There are recordings of Genworth and Putnam. Plans. All it takes is one listen to the first recording to learn that Genworth hired Putnam to kill me and my family.
They failed at taking me, but they took my girls.
This motherfucker was instrumental in destroying my fucking soul, and I turned around and handed his baby girl back to him like it was the honorable goddamn thing to do.
Rage billows up inside me. Black. Thick. Toxic. I want to get my hands around the throats of every motherfucker who was a part of this.
Why?
How in the fuck did these two assholes get together in the first place?
I dig until I find something that Halo had been sniffing out, but just hadn’t arrived there yet. Weapons across the border. I remember back to what Copper had said.
“Firms kind of like the one you owned. Those private contractors had gigs with the NSA and were basically selling smuggled weapons back to the government at astronomical prices. All in the name of national defense.”
Genworth was a private contractor.
This was their one gig with the NSA.
Until I was out of the picture.
It smacks me right in the fucking face. I was Genworth’s competition. He wanted me gone so he could steamroll through and get all the contracts. Greedy fucking asshole.
He’s going to pay.
Holy shit, he’s going to pay.
I spend the next three hours creating a web only I can walk on and then keep the string tucked away for later.
But now?
Now I make a plan to take his most valuable asset.
His daughter.
It’s only fair since he fucking took mine.
It’s conveniently Church night, not that it would have mattered. I was going to call a big ass meeting regardless. Even Copper was allowed in on this meeting, despite not being patched in, because this was bigger than the Royal Bastards.