“Completely believable,” Sal adds with a rare smirk.
“Fuck all of you,” I say without heat, tossing cash on the table for my drinks.
Luca catches my arm as I turn to go. “Seriously, though. Watch yourself. The Petrovs play by different rules than we do.”
I nod, acknowledging the genuine concern beneath his teasing. “I know what I’m doing.”
But as I exit the club into the cool night air, I’m less confident than I pretend to be.
Back in my secure workspace, I create a shadow echo system that will track transactions from their origin without triggering security alerts. It’s elegant work, requiring the kind of focus that usually drowns out all other thoughts.
Usually.
Tonight, Kira’s face keeps intruding—the flash of surprise in her eyes after our kiss, the careful distance she maintained afterward, the controlled precision of her movements, betraying nothing of what might lie beneath.
I force myself back to the task at hand, fingers flying across the keyboard as I establish the echo in a section of the dark web so obscure it might as well not exist. Protected by seven layers of encryption and accessible only through a series of dead drops and key exchanges that would challenge even NyxBinary, Kira won’t be able to see what I’m doing.
Hours pass in the familiar rhythm of complex coding. When I finally activate the system, it’s well past 2 AM.
The results begin filtering in immediately—transaction logs mirroring into my shadow system, creating a forward-flowing map of every dollar through the joint ventures.
And there it is—the anomaly.
Not from our side at all, but from the Russian accounts. Small diversions before the money even reaches the shared systems—precisely calculated withdrawals disguised as transaction fees, currency conversion costs, and administrative expenses.
A masterpiece of financial sleight of hand—and unmistakably originating from within the Petrov organization.
Vito was right. We’re being double-crossed.
But by whom? Vadim himself? Alexei, the enforcer? Nicolai, the strategist?
Kira?
The thought sends a shiver of discomfort down my spine. Is this whole thing—her suspicion of an inside job, her offer of alliance, even her response to our kiss—an elaborate performance? A way to keep me distracted while her family bleeds ours dry?
I dig deeper, tracing the specific authentication protocols used for the diversions. The security markers are Russian, but not Kira’s style. Her code is elegant and precise. This is blunter, more traditional in structure.
Still, she must know. Her skills are too formidable for her not to have discovered this if she were genuinely looking.
Unless she isn’t looking in the right places. Unless she truly believes someone is framing me, rather than her own family framing mine.
U nless she’s the best liar I’ve ever encountered.
I lean back in my chair, the implications spiraling through my mind. If I bring this to Vito, he’ll move against the Petrovs immediately. The engagement will be broken. Our alliance willbe shattered. We’ll return to the cold war between families that has simmered for years, ready to erupt into open conflict at the slightest provocation.
And Kira... where would that leave Kira?
Between two warring families. Between loyalty and truth. Between her blood and... whatever is developing between us.
The midnight meeting looms closer. In less than twenty-two hours, we’ll be face to face, alone, without the performance required for our families.
What do I tell her? What do I hide? How do I discover if she’s playing me or being played alongside me?
I stare at the evidence on my screen—irrefutable proof of betrayal, though not necessarily hers.
In the hacking world, there is a concept called “zero trust”—the principle that nothing should be automatically trusted, even within a secure perimeter. Every access, every identity, and every request must be continuously verified.
It’s a cold way to operate. Efficient but isolating.
