“I’ll wait here, Ma’am.” Hiswsounds like a softv.
“Ava,” I correct him. The big man blushes, red creeping up his neck.
“Ava.”
Vas shoots me a disapproving look, but I simply wink at him and walk right past him into the somber darkness of the tunnels that run beneath the compound. A lump of sadness threatens to emerge when my thoughts turn back to the last time I was here with Matthias. We were a team then, taking down Elias’s port access and bringing his illicit dealings into the light.
We were in a bubble those few weeks—one that was later shattered by my perceived betrayal.
I want him to be here with me. To rule together, side by side. That was all I ever wanted from him. What a fairytale that was. A dream that will never be reached. A goal that can never be made.
There’s only me to lead now, and just the mere thought of that darkens the surrounding colors.
“You doing okay?” Mark asks hesitantly as we walk. I nod and turn to face him, a smile on my face that doesn’t quite reach far enough. Skepticism burns behind his eyes. He doesn’t believe me. “If you ever need anything—” He lets the invitation hang in the air between us.
“I know,” I assure him. “Thank you.”
He takes a deep breath and nods, accepting that I won’t be spilling my guts anytime soon. Emotions aren’t new to me, but growing up, I learned to limit them, hide them, lock them away so they can’t be used against me.
Show fear and they made me more afraid. Show pain and they reveled in increasing it tenfold. Rage was beaten out of me. Defiance was whipped from my body. Sadness was starved. Happiness barely existed enough for them to bother with.
Matthias was the first person I truly opened myself up to emotionally. He took them and shaped them into armor. Carvedweapons from the very things that burned me, drowned me, and carved me into pieces.
“There she is,” Nikolai says, standing from his seat, a large toothy grin cracking his normally grumpy exterior. “Welcome back, Ma—Ava.”
The cold glare I give him stops the formalities dead in their tracks.
“Hello, Nikolai,” I beam back and take the chair he offers. “Maxim.” I nod at the burly Russian.
“Ava.”
“Let’s get started.” Vas inclines his head toward Mark. A moment later, the screens before us fill with the files Libby has been collecting on Persephone’s Web.
“So,” Mark begins, “I’ve been digging through these files for the last two hours and I’ve got to say—Libby was a fucking genius. Not only did she use Persephone’s servers to hide the files, but she also encrypted the hell out of them. The NSA and CIA would be proud.”
“I wonder who taught her how to do that?” I muse teasingly.
“Surely you don’t think I would teach her such naughty things?” Mark holds his hands up in a gesture of innocence, but the smirk on his face speaks volumes.
“Moving on,” Vas grunts.
Mark winks at me before turning back to the screen. Cheeky bastard.
“I was able to decrypt a good amount of them, but there are a few my program is still working through due to the amount of data stored within them,” he continues. “From the size of the files, I’d favor a guess that they’re probably MP4s.” He turns his gaze to Nikolai and Maksim. “For the vintage models in the class, that means videos.”
“Fuck you,” Nikolai growls, throwing his pen as hard as he can at the hacker. Mark laughs and dances out of the way. “We’re not that old, you fucker.”
“Could have fooled me,” Vas murmurs.
I laugh, tears gathering at the corners of my eyes when Nikolai threatens to dismember Vas’s family jewels with a rusted spoon.
“Okay. Okay.” I wipe at my eyes. “What have you got from the ones that have been decrypted?”
Mark’s smile turns feral.
“Well, your instincts about your grandfather are spot on,” he tells me. “Seamus McDonough has been a naughty senior citizen, and I’m not just talking about him running the Irish in Boston. On top of the usual drug and weapon distribution, he’s invested huge sums of money in ground transportation companies over the last ten years secured by?—”
“Knightman Security.”
