Page 61
Possibly my father. But he could just as easily have been my father’s adversary.
Time to find out—time to lay a trap or two.
After dinner at the Volkov manor—and having a panic attack in Severin’s arms—I planted more surveillance equipment. Because when I got so graciously invited into Severin’s home, I made the most of it.
The Morozovs had moved onto the estate for the time being, and I’d hidden cameras and microphones throughout their rooms so I could watch them.
In my office, I sat before a wall of monitors and switched on four feeds.
One camera showed Severin helping Svetlana with her homework.
Another showed Ilya in the kitchen, baking. He had a newfound obsession with bread.
A third camera showed Nika having a full-blown argument with Kaz… nothing ever changed.
The final feed showed my father sitting alone at the foot of his bed, apparently waiting for something. Moments later, my hand flew over my eyes as my mother—whom I hadn’t seen in seven years—appeared in lingerie and gave him a lap dance, and I now wanted to throw myself off a cliff.
Bile clawed up my throat.
No child was supposed to see something like that.
The urge to turn off the monitor and burn my eyes out was overwhelming.
But I didn’t.
I bit my lip. That wasn’t a funny joke considering my history. But sometimes, I missed those scars. Sometimes, I missed the blur of it all.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t turn my parents’ foreplay off, because if I was going to smoke out Damon and make sure he wasn’t one of my family members, I needed it on.
Hackers left digital fingerprints, like mice scurrying through a system. Tiny footprints, and I’d found plenty of Damon’s.
He might have been hiding from me, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t attack him. Just like a rodent, I could be a little nuisance too and plant my own little bugs.
A little malware to haunt him.
But before launching my attack, there was something I needed to do.
I walked to the office kitchen, grabbed a bag of popcorn, and microwaved it for two minutes before returning to my computer and pressing Enter.
My program had one purpose: to find all of Damon’s entry points into Bratva’s system and destroy them one by one.
If the system were a house, a hacker would leave windows or doors propped open to get back in. My software closed those entrances and locked Damon out.
It found compromised user credentials and revoked them, detected and destroyed malicious software, and uncovered hidden accounts and shut them down.
It wasn’t a particularly fast or sophisticated program, but it worked.
More importantly, hackers monitored their own work, and as soon as my program started booting Damon out, he would know and come running.
He wouldn’t want to lose years of hard work. So he would have to find my malware and destroy it.
That wouldn't be too difficult. I’d made it easy to break because breaking wasn’t the point.
The hunt was.
I grabbed a handful of popcorn and shoved it into my mouth as I watched, and within five minutes, Damon had discovered my program and started fighting back.
Good.
