"Deal," he says in a voice too rough. "Try not to break me first."
"No promises," I say, and drop into the chair opposite his as if I’ve always sat here, waking the nearest monitor. "Ground rules. I’ll use your box, but you don’t touch my keys."
He leans against the doorframe, amused. "I don’t need your keys."
"Mm." I unzip my bag and set a matte-black USB on the desk, no brand, just a tiny silver raven etched on the side. Then, a small, nondescript travel router the size of a deck of cards. "You’re getting the guest treatment."
His brow kicks up. "You’re about to boot my workstation off a mystery stick in my own house?"
"Relax, Marito." I thumb the power, tap the boot menu, and choose USB. "It’s a disposable OS—RAM-only. When I shut down, it evaporates. No writes to your drive. No crumbs for your gremlins."
"That assumes I’m not watching network traffic."
I hold up a slim hardware token between two fingers. "My accounts are hardware-locked. Without this and my face, you get gibberish. And I’m not touching your network."
An amused eyebrow moves up; he's sexy. My mind is still spinning from the incredible sex. If that is a promise of what's to come… hell, I might be in more trouble than I care to admit. "And I'm to take your word for it?"
"Hey," I wave my hands up, "I'm just anodd job girl."
His grin deepens, and he shakes his head. "There is nojustabout you, piccola tempesta."
His nickname makes me laugh. "Trust me, there is nothinglittleabout me either."
"I'm afraid you're right." His eyes are heated as he watches me plug my travel router into a power outlet, let it wake up, then tether my phone to it.
"Separate pipe," I explain. "Double-hop. You’ll see a little noise in the air, but nothing on your cables."
"Paranoid."
"Professional." I slot the token, look into the tiny sensor on it, and feel the familiar confirmation buzz against my thumb. The live OS drops me into a clean browser I trust. "Even if you packet-mirror, all you catch is encrypted rain."
He smiles like he’s both irritated and turned on. "Proceed, Mrs. Conti."
I proceed.
Two steps and I’m in the hardened mailbox I use for old ghosts. One new message sits at the top; it's from Vasili, timestamped with some ungodly Moscow hour. When that man is onto something, he doesn't sleep.
Subject: ZIMNYAYA SHKOLA / VORONIN FILES – NEW HITS
I open it. My pulse picks up.
We’re still swimming in Voronin’s trash ocean, but I found a thread of the facility where Margarita V.V. and Igor V.V. were raised/trained. Cover name: Internat No. 7 (Voronino District), real codename: ZimnyayaShkola—Winter School. Officially, it was declared an orphanage, only the children housed inside were all Viktor's bastards. It was a feeder program. Curriculum: languages, marksmanship, forgery, seduction, cryptography, fieldcraft. Instructors rotated out of GRU and Spetsnaz. Funding: siphoned from three shell charities tied to the Church of St. Vladimir and Cappella del Corvo.
My blood goes cold. It's the same churches the Cells are using. I look up at Stephano, "Does the nameCappella del Corvomean anything to you?"
His eyes narrow, and he steps closer. I make no move to stop him from reading over my shoulder. "What is this?"
"The church." I prompt, sure he can figure out the rest himself. He's a big boy.
"Yeah." He rubs his neck in confusion and looks utterly adorable, liquifying my ovaries, who are now fully in cahoots with my vagina in wanting to meet that certain part of him again. His voice distracts me from my lower body. "It's the church most of us attend…" he pauses just long enough for me to realize he's about to drop another bombshell. "Donna Margarita was a staunch supporter. I have to ask one of the older matrons, but I'm sure I heard somewhere that this church became La Famiglia's favorite after a heavy Donna Margarita endorsement."
I whistle low, "Why the hell would Donna Margarita escape Russia, only to go right back to the same church that was used to cover her upbringing?"
Stephano shakes his head, and I follow his eyes as he reads on.
Project VORONA—raven—housed Voronin’s illegitimate offspring. Spare heirs or hidden assets. His goal was to build a private stable of deniable tools he could deploy inside and outside Bratva lines.
I'll attach a map of known locations.
