Page 78 of Marked By the Devil

“They can’t negotiate their way out of this,” Carina said, her sass more evident in her accented voice.

“They can’t even defend against this,” Mila said with worry.

I shook my head, ignoring the cramp in my stomach. I was only nauseated because of the stress. Maybe something I ate.

It’s not because I could be pregnant.

Dismissing my discomfort, I shook my head. “There is another option now,” I said.

Elena lifted her head. “What?”

“Getting wires crossed,” I said.

“How?” Carina came to stand behind me as she tried to watch what I typed. I moved too fast for her, jumping on this idea. “I can’t understand what you’re doing,” she complained.

“Someone get them. Get somebody from down there and tell them to come here.” I couldn’t slow down. I refused to lose a single second. While this idea had only just come to me since I felt so off and sluggish earlier, I knew I had to act now.

Assess. Ascertain. And act.

I assessed the situation of imminent destruction.

I ascertained that many would die and the Bratva would suffer damages unless something was done.

And I was going to act in the vein of stopping them from succeeding.

“What? What are you doing?” Carina asked.

“Getting wires crossed,” I repeated.

“I’ll get them,” Mila said, hurrying out of the room.

Elena rolled her chair closer to see what I was trying to accomplish.

“Get Trojan,” I told her.

Maybe it would’ve been smarter to ask Adrik for permission to attempt this first, but I could always ask him for forgiveness later. Viktor wouldn’t let his brother stay too mad at me for being impulsive. I was going rogue, kind of, but it was too good of an idea to pass on.

“What are you doing?” Carina asked again.

“Changing their plans and throwing them all off so no one knows what they’re supposed to do,” I replied, deep in the frantic rush of revising emails and messages.

Trojan hopped on a video call. As always, his box wasn’t filled in. An icon of a person showed a blank cartoon, but now wasn’t time for me to wonder what he looked like.

“Wren? What are you doing?” he asked.

“Mix it all up. Hop on the flagged messages and emails and change it all up. Confuse them,” I ordered.

“What? It’s too late for that—” He didn’t finish, likely checking remotely what I was doing on my screen. “Oh…”

“You’re just changing up their plans?” Carina asked.

“You think that will work?” Trojan asked.

I winced at another rush of queasiness that hit me from out of nowhere.

No, not nowhere. Somewhere. Like my body adapting to the fact that I’d been carrying a baby.

“It’s worth a try.”