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I knew what physical pain felt like, but nothing else ever registered. Not fear or sadness. I couldn’t remember laughing or ever having a reason to smile. After seeing how the other students at school behaved, I knew I was defective. But I was starting to learn how to pretend so I didn’t scare my teachers. At least, not more than I already did.
“Look at them,” Daria sneered, not unlike the pimp on the corner, only she had all her teeth. “He stole her from you, Vaughn.”
“She was never mine, so how did he steal her?” I asked.
Anger flickered in her eyes. She disliked it when I talked back. I’d have to be extra cautious on my way to and from school tomorrow.
“Aren’t you jealous of the boy?” she taunted.
“Is that what I should be?”
“Yes! He has the life you should be living. She left you in that hospital to die. And now, she’s playing happy family with someone else’s son, while you come home every night bruised and bloody.”
I glanced at the picture again and shrugged. “Okay, then. I’m jealous.”
Polina muttered something under her breath, but she was already turning her chair so she could leave us. “Get cleaned up,” she called over her shoulder. “Dinner will be ready soon.”
“Yes, Polina,” I said quietly.
Daria grinned down at me, the mania in her eyes increasing. “When you die, I’m going to gift Anya your body. And then I will take Ryan, turn him against her just like we have you.”
I stared back at her without blinking, knowing she was waiting for me to react, to give her something. Any sign that what she said hurt or angered me. But all I felt was the same cold numbness. “Okay.”
AGE 11
“Good, Vaughn,” Polina praised as she watched me tear down the firewalls. “Very, very good.”
My fingers kept typing, ignoring her as she continued to look over my shoulder. This job was time-sensitive. The offshore bank had high cybersecurity, so I only had fifteen seconds between each wall I broke through before it locked completely and they traced my IP address.
Not that they would find anything. I’d made contingency plans for not getting through each back door. If I failed and they tried to figure out who did it, they would be knocking on the door of a guy in Nebraska who liked his porn to be more animal-heavy than human.
A beep alerted from the computer, and then I was looking at hundreds of illegal bank accounts. Each with hundreds of millions of US dollars in them.
“Transfer them,” Polina commanded, finally sitting back in her wheelchair, a pleased smile on her face. I was already moving the money before she said anything.
With her no longer watching my every move, I skimmed a few million for myself from each account, hiding it away until I could transfer it later. Daria would never know, and even if Polina suspected, she wouldn’t find the funds.
If she could get into the bank herself, she would have done so. Instead, she needed my help. Whether she wanted to admit it or not, I had bypassed her in skill. For the last year, I’d been on multiple countries’ top ten most wanted lists for my hacking skills. If they’d known my identity, they would have already found me. But they had no idea who I was, let alone that I was an eleven-year-old kid living in Russia. To them, I was nothing more than Ghost, but they weren’t even sure I was the same person they were looking for. I didn’t leave a trail behind or a calling card or take souvenirs. All I did was steal money from people who exploited the weaknesses of others.
Those governments should have been thanking me, not calling me a criminal. If the deeds I did were those of a villain, then I wasn’t sure what a superhero was supposed to do to be deemed worthy. Seemed like bullshit to me, but no one asked me, and I wasn’t going to go around supplying them with my opinion.
It took a while to clear out everything, but once I did, I deleted the entire bank. Offshore banks shouldn’t exist anyway, and I’d just shut down one that housed the profits for some of the biggest players in sex trafficking. In the blink of an eye, they went from being major underworld players to being nothing.
“You did well,” Polina said as she picked up her cup of tea and took a small sip.
I didn’t imagine Polina had wanted me to empty those accounts for any noble reason. Her only goal was to steal the money, not shut down the trafficking. In the past six months alone, I’d stolen over a billion dollars for her and Daria in exactly the same way. Enough money to keep her in luxurious comfort for centuries. She was simply greedy for more.
Yet her constant craving for money was nothing compared to Daria’s need for supposed vengeance on Anya Volkov, now Anya Vitucci since she had married my biological father several years before.
Closing my laptop when I heard footsteps, I sat at the desk, watching Polina tilt her head in the direction of the door. Anticipation darkened her face as she held her breath until Daria entered the room.
If anyone wanted revenge against Anya, I would have figured it was Polina more than Daria. According to my surrogate mothers, Anya was the one responsible for Polina being without the use of her legs. Daria’s tale of the incident didn’t make sense to me, but I didn’t care one way or the other.
But while Daria fanned the embers of Polina’s anger toward the one who had made her dependent on her chair, most days, it was Daria who was close to full-on rage when it came to Anya.
“The child was born,” Daria announced, crossing to the desk with a stack of pictures in hand.
Polina expelled a long sigh, a flash of longing filling her face before she returned to her normally indifferent mask. “And?”
