Page 65 of Vicious Betrayal

I scramble up and hurry into the bedroom. Cormac's laptop is still sitting in the center of the unmade white linens. My heart hammers violently against my ribs. You shouldn't be doing this, a voice screams inside my skull. He loves you. He married you. He wants this life with you, and you're throwing it away.

But if I don't do this, Reyes takes my family. She takes me, drags me into a federal courtroom, and when my child is born, it will be behind the concrete walls of a prison while Cormac hates me for the rest of his life, once he knows why I'm gone. It won't matter that I failed. He'll find out I tried.

I lose him anyway, and everything else. There is no good choice. There's only survival.

I sit on the bed and open his laptop. The screen flares to life, displaying the login prompt.

Password. I swallow hard. I can't worry about whether or not it's going to ping him for too many logins. I have to find something, and now. This is the best chance I'll have.

I try his last name and birth year. I try the name of his favorite beer and his birth year. I try the year and make of his motorcycle.

The prompt shakes red with each failure, warning me that the system will lock after five attempts. My chest tightens until I can barely pull air into my lungs. What does a man like Cormac lock his life behind? Loyalty to his boss? The neighborhood where he grew up? A date he was badly injured and survived?

Or something else?

A memory flashes through my mind of his rough voice in the dark bedroom of his Chicago home, his fingers tracing my hip, whispering that he'd thought his life was only going to be one thing until I walked into that club and wrecked every wall he had built up.

September eighth.

The night I met him. The night we changed both of our lives forever.

My fingers shake as I type the numbers. 09082026.

The red warning vanishes, and the screen comes to life.

A sob catches in the back of my throat. It feels like a physical blow, knocking the wind out of me. 0908. He used the date that a twenty-year-old girl plopped down on the barstool next to him and ruined his peace.

He locked his world behind the night he met me.

Tears sting my eyes, blurring the bright screen, but I force them back. I can't cry. I don't have the luxury of grief right now. If I break down now, I'm going to get caught, and everything will be ruined for nothing.

I grab my phone from my pocket and open the camera. I look through the files as quickly as possible, finding the newest download, and open it.

It's exactly what the FBI needs. It's ledgers comparing shipments of illegal drugs and weapons parts against the income from their legitimate businesses. Records of meetings. Shipment manifests. Bank account downloads.

This isn't vague or hearsay. It's exactly what Reyes wants, and now I can give it to her.

I can get out.

My hands move fast, shaking, and I force myself to hold my phone steady above the screen, snapping photographs of every single document. I photograph twelve separate files, double-checking each image on my phone to make sure the text is legible. When the last one is captured, I close the windows and shut the laptop.

My palms are clammy with cold sweat. Fifteen minutes have passed. He could be walking up the terrace stairs right now.

I lock the door. My reflection in the mirror is pale, my eyes wide and dark with terror. I pull out my phone.

Oksana: I have the documents. All of them.

The reply comes within ten seconds.

Reyes: Upload the files to the secure server immediately.

My thumb hovers over the screen.

Oksana: No.

If I upload them now, while I'm still sitting in this villa with Cormac, the FBI will move before sunset. Declan will find out within hours. Cormac will realize his laptop was accessed. And I'll be trapped on a remote Greek island with a mafia enforcer who will know beyond a shadow of a doubt that his brand-new wife is a federal informant.

Who knows what he'll do to me in the wake of that betrayal? The FBI has promised me things, but Cormac could kill me before they could ever get me out of here.