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That, I did. While I was keeping an eye on Nissa, and trying to find a way in with Julian, I intended to get my life back. No, it wasn't the primary objective, but if I had a way back to reclaiming my life, I was going to take it.
Nissa hadn't come out of her room since Jamila left. She’d grabbed snacks, her books, water, and closed herself in to her room.
The old me would have at least felt a little bit bad that she was withdrawn and hiding from me. But even as the twinge of feelings flared up, I shut it down. Not the plan.
Besides, Nissa wasn't letting us get close ever again, so I didn't have to worry.
It's your feelings that are the problem, not hers.
Fucking hell. Instead of worrying about her, I poured my energy into the one thing I could control. What I was doing was illegal in several countries. And considering that Rogues sent me in to spy on Julian, this was beyond risky.
But still, the rush of adrenaline called me. My fingers buzzed with the energy. I could do this. This I understood. This made sense. Besides, Julian had stolen from me. He owed me blood and a whole lot more.
I setup my proxy servers and relays, careful to bounce them over forty points, and then I set a timer. The thing with most hackers was sometimes we got cocky. Sometimes we wanted to poke around things longer than we should. They were people with skills. The kind of skills you see in movies that seemed fantastical, ones that could break into anything.
The truth of it was most hacking required time, patience, and an understanding of your fucking limits. Nine times out of ten, your ego could get you in trouble, looking for just a little too long, wanting just a little bit more, meaning to leave your stamp all over whatever the fuck you were looking at. But that wasn't me.
Oh, really?
To be fair, that was how Rogues had found me. I'd gotten a little too curious about one of my mates at Cambridge. Rogues had been keeping an eye on him in connection to his father, who did a nasty bit of work for a Russian oligarch. Weapons, trafficking, the whole nine. But still, men like Antonio Igno made that look like child's play. Anyway, I’d poked along a set of assets. It was the lure I shouldn't have gone through, and I got busted. The worst thing was, I hadn't even known Rogues was a thing I needed to look out for. I'd been bloody worried about British Intelligence, which was what Rogues were, in a way. But British Intelligence didn't have the manpower to fuck with someone like me. Besides, I wasn't stealing anything.
Just the same, I'd stayed just a little too long and my relays had gone bad. Truth be told, they just had a damn good hacker. The next morning, as I'd headed out to class, fifteen Rogues agents were waiting outside of my fucking dorm room, strapped and ready to party. They'd known exactly who the fuck I was. They'd cracked the Westin Rourke identity in an embarrassingly short amount of time. Gabe had let me keep the name though once he understood why I bothered with it. And it was the best decision that I ever made.
So why are you going to cock it all up by poking your nose where it doesn't belong?
That was just the thing, my nose did belong here. It was my money, after all. My legacy.
I set my timer, flicked my gaze over to Nissa's door, and cracked my knuckles. I was just going to have a quick look. Besides, Gabe would want me to have a look. I might find something interesting.
Excuses, excuses. If you're going to have a poke about, look. Just be quick about it.
It took longer than I had anticipated. In four years, Julian had learned a little bit about asset projection. Diversify more. He'd gotten better at hiding the money.
Three minutes in, with two minutes left on my timer, and I found what I was looking for.
The money trails. And I was buried in it. Files upon files, upon files. Accounts upon accounts. Julian had been skimming off the top of his legitimate businesses for years. That wasn't a surprise. He'd been using legitimate businesses to wash his money for years. But there was an influx of cash twelve years ago when I’d come to live with him, then another around ten years ago. He'd been put in charge of my trust as well around the time Nissa came to live with him. He'd taken a massive payment from the trust to pay himself. The five million pound fee was enough to make me wince.
But the dribs and drabs of payments over the years made me frown. And then on my eighteenth birthday, there was a massive transfer of the remaining balance into a separate numbered account.
I'd known he had stolen from me. I had known part of the reason he'd taken me in was to take charge of my trust fund. But knowing it and seeing how he'd done it were two different things. My one minute timer went off, and I frowned, looking back at the first date. What was that date? And why was that account separated from the others?
The thirty-second timer went off. I knew I should back out, have a poke around another day, but I couldn't help myself. I searched some more of his other reference files and found another massive payment to a medical lab. Two hundred thousand quid. Synergics Genetics? What the hell was that?
Ten seconds. Fuck. I didn't have time to look anymore. I'd have to come back.
It was only as I shut down that the date stuck out in my mind and my gut clenched. That was the same year Nissa had come to live with him.
Westin
Four years ago…
* * *
I knew there were rules. And I understood them.
It was an awkward thing when you were assigned to be your best mate’s bodyguard. A part of me thought it wouldn’t be that bad. After all, I already cared about her. She was my best mate.
She’s more than that.
