Page 154 of Shattered Veil
Shockingly, there’s a folder with one file dated three days before Christmas.
I smash ENTER and a dialogue box flies open.
PASSCODE: XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
“I don’t suppose you can hack that?” Ella asks, her voice shaking.
“I’m not sure.”
“It’s like he wanted you to try to stop it.”
“And possibly fail. There’s jamming the knife into your gut, and then there’s the twisting that hurts worst.”
“Entering useless numbers—”
“Or letters, or characters.”
“Oh my God, how many possibilities does that make it?”
“21 spaces to fill?” I start to type in every failsafe code I know for that total of characters.
It’s not a random number. It’s a passcode program used often, but Snow would never code it with known passcode breakers.
“Balor, Kieran is calling you,” Jillian says from the office entryway.
“Tell him I’ll call him back.”
“Your brother, the king,” Ella whispers.
I scoff. “He’ll never hurt me and even if this can’t be fixed and we end up broke, or worse owing millions in transaction fees, he won’t have any power to hurt me.”
“Balor, I’m so sorry.” Ella holds back tears.
“No need, baby. We’ll figure this out.” I give her a little squeeze, but she flinches. The many wounds on her body are still inflamed.
Each night, I gently massage every spot with ointment to help her heal. My kisses and soft-spoken words telling her how much I love her are meant to mend her heart and soul. I’m the only man in her life now.
She shifts in her seat and tugs at the bralette she’s wearing because the tattoo under her ribcage...
I freeze as my mind buzzes and lands on the answer.
“Ella, you said your father suggested that tattoo under your ribcage.”
She stiffens. “Not the location, but the saying.”
The Russian alphabet always freaked me out. I’d spent time in Moscow and had figured out some of the letters in order to use their keyboards. I didn’t love her father’s poison etched into Ella’s skin, but it’s her heritage.
“The tattoo meant so much to him and for some reason that butcher with the laser carvedthatone off me first.”
I stand up so fast, that I nearly launch her across the room. “What?”
My eyes devour her body. Those letters that represented some random saying, she didn’t even understand, had been removed from her body first.
Fuck, that can’t be a coincidence.
“Ella, my love. Can you remember exactly what that saying said?”
“No. It’s some Russian proverb. Dad always said it in his native tongue.”