I strode through the club, giving a salute to several of Michael’s men on the way out. Once outside, I pumped up the heat in my Audi and began the twenty-minute drive to my sleepy Long Island town.
After arriving home, I crawled into bed in my quiet house—so different from the blaring music of the packed nightclub. It was a visible representation of the vast differences between my world and Katia’s, and I reminded myself for the millionth time that she was not the right woman for me.
But as I lay in bed, stroking myself to visions of her stunning eyes and beautiful lips as she’d smiled at me, I couldn’t find the will to think of any woman but her.
Chapter 24
Alexis
Isat in my makeshift office on Friday morning and pulled up Michael’s security camera feed. Would he mind that I hacked into it? Probably. But it was harmless, and I was just looping over a few seconds of video. I located the video of me walking to Nick’s the previous afternoon, and looped it so those few seconds disappeared. Then, I did the same with the video of me leaving his house and walking back.
Tonight, I’d log in from my phone and create the same loop so Michael’s security team didn’t see me walking to Nick’s at eleven o’clock. I knew they monitored the feed intermittently, and didn’t want anyone else knowing about my visits to Nick until we worked everything out.
“Nick’s right about sneaking around,” I said, scrolling through the security parameters on Michael’s camera system dashboard since I figured it didn’t hurt to check that they were solid while I was in there. “You can’t keep looping the cameras forever, Alexis.”
As I scrolled through the backend of the camera system dashboard, my eyebrows drew together. There were several random logins to the security cameras by IP addresses that weren’t authorized by the system. As I filtered through them, I opened a notepad andpasted them so I could trace them once I’d finished my online job applications for Meta, Google and a few other companies. The recruiter had sent several to me yesterday, and for some reason, I was stalling on completing them.
“Alexis?” Michael asked, peeking his head around the corner. “Do you have a second?”
“Sure,” I said, swiveling in my chair to face him. “Do you want me to come to your office?”
“We can talk here.” He pulled over the chair that sat in the corner and extended his phone. “Do you know how to tell if a phone’s been hacked? I’ve already switched to a new phone because I have intel that this one’s been infiltrated. Someone fed false information to the feds that our shipment this morning was in Bayonne instead of Elizabeth.”
“That’s not good,” I said, taking his phone. “And yes, I can figure out which IPs are hacking you and bypass their VPNs to figure out their original locations.”
He rubbed the back of his neck. “I’m going to pretend I understoodsomeof the words in that sentence.”
A laugh escaped my throat. “It’s fine. It might take me a day or two. Is that okay?”
“Sure. I appreciate any help you can give me. Some of my security guys are okay with technology, but no one’s a whiz like you. I know you’re also applying for jobs, and I don’t want to interfere with that.”
“Oh, it’s fine,” I said, waving my hand. “This stuff is much more fun. You won’t need this phone anymore then? Because I’m going to disable some things that will help me hack into it better.”
“Nope. I got the new one this morning on the way back from the docks and the service has been cut off on that one.”
“That was the right thing to do,” I said, patting his arm. “See? You’re not so bad at tech. You’ve got the basics.”
He gave me a droll look. “You’re giving me too much credit, but thank you.”
“On another note, who do you think is hacking you? Is it someone you should be more alarmed about than usual? There’s danger, and then there’simminentdanger. Do I need to worry?”
His expression grew pensive. “It’s certainly concerning, but my men have been extremely diligent in their surveillance. I have men assigned to monitor Oskar Poska and all of his top associates, and for now, we haven’t noticed any overly suspicious activity. There was an unauthorized firearm shipment that came into Elizabeth last week, but it was claimed by a major firearms dealer in Schenectady. The owner says he forgot to complete the paperwork properly.”
“Sounds fishy,” I said, wrinkling my nose.
“Extremely. Everyone involved with firearms in the Northeast know they come through me—”
“The illegal ones especially,” I said, arching an eyebrow.
“Those come through me or through someone like Oskar or Marco Nunez. Who would you prefer?”
I shivered. Michael wasdefinitelya better option.
“Is there such a thing as agoodgangster?” I teased, tapping my chin. “Because I guess that’s what you are, and I much prefer that.”
His lips flattened. “Your mother calls me a gangster too. Should I be offended?”
“Well, youarea gangster, so no. We Rossi women get the game, Michael. Don’t worry. Mom and I aren’t shrinking violets, and we know exactly what you do. I think it’s admirable that you try to createsomemoral boundaries. Lord knows, my dad never did that.”
