“This does not look like a place a successful hacker would live,” my driver mutters in heavily accented English, his baleful glare on the house.
“I suppose not,” I agree. Though he’s successful enough to hack into our security, which isn’t easy. Not with the system I have in place.
I only understand where the money is going when my men find a basement in the seemingly empty house. Multiple towers hum with power underneath a wide desk on one wall, their expensive monitors a bright glow in the windowless room.
Given the all-clear from my men, I move to the monitors, each with multiple windows up in a chaotic array of the hacker’s work.
“Evgeny.”
I join Dmitri where he stands and bend to peer closely at one of the screens, his mouth set in a grim line. I understand when I look closer. Bratva files. Damning files. Files that tie the Kucherov Bratva to Kucher Enterprises.
And me.
A noise catches us off guard, and everybody in the room swings toward the figure emerging from a doorway so deep in shadow we’d missed it.
For a moment, time freezes. The figure’s attention locks on us, on our guns, and ours locks on him.
With a sharp intake of breath, the bowl of food in the figure’s hands drops, spilling liquid contents over the floor, and the figure darts back the way it came.
I don’t have to issue an order before my team is after the hacker, spilling through the doorway. A crash is followed by a scream and a cry of pain that quickly cuts off.
Dmitri reappears and gives me the all-clear, and the men make way for me in the tight space.
One of my men has the figure up against the wall of what turns out to be a small kitchenette hollowed out from what I imagine was a storage space. I gesture with my chin, and he jerks the figure around by the scruff of his neck before slamming him back against the wall.
Except it’s not a him, it’s a her.
It’sher.
She recognizes me in the same instant, those eyes growing round as dinner plates, the full, expressive eyebrows above them nearly meeting her hairline.
Fuck.
Eva Volkova is the hacker.
On the heels of my disbelief comes white-hot anger. It’s too much of a coincidence. The fight last night, she and her brother at Dmitri’s club on a night I’m there.
“You’re trespassing. Get out of here before I call the police,” the woman spits, the huskiness from last night gone from her voice, replaced by venom and more than a tinge of fear.
But she hasn’t felt true fear yet.
The guy holding her in place must see the look on my face because he hurriedly clears the way, switching places with me. His hand moves away, and she uses the moment to try to bolt, kicking out as she dives to the side.
She has bravado, but Eva has nowhere to go in the cramped room. In the next heartbeat, my hand is around her throat, yanking her back and pushing her against the wall, my fist closing until she stops squirming.
NowI see real fear in her eyes. I see it as all color drains from her face. I feel it in the way she freezes in my grip. I also see it when her attention slips to the scars on the side of my face I hid last night. Her eyes widen another fraction, and my anger grows hotter at the reaction.
“And what do you think the police will be able to do?” The purr rumbles in my throat as I master the rage-induced desire to close my fist and crush her windpipe. Her throat moves against my hand in a convulsive swallow, her eyes glued to mine like frozen prey.
“If you’re going to kill me, just do it,” she hisses. A flash of admiration for her bravado in the face of danger tugs a corner of my mouth up, as do her next words.
“Just do it somewhere else so my family doesn’t see it.”
“You think you have any bargaining power at all? You fucked with the Kucherov Bratva and thought you could get away with it?”
My smile is beastly, and she shivers, trying to pull away as I flash her a coldly wolfish grin.
“I was going to kill you, get rid of all the files you found, destroy your computers. Instead, I have a proposition for you.”
