Page 20 of Shattered Veil
Fuck.
Moments later, my regular cell phone rings, and I grouse at the caller.
“Aye, Trace,” I answer. “I’ll be down in a few minutes.”
Although after I shower, masturbate, and figure out what to wear, it will be closer to forty minutes.
But Trace works for me and doesn’t give a shit how late we are.
Forty minutes later on the dot, Trace Quinlan arrives at my townhouse in Downtown Astoria to drive me in my new Rivian, a state-of-the-art and expensive-as-fuck electric SUV, to the weekly meeting with my brothers.
Now that I’m awake, I’m teeming with energy over the devious plan I nailed, but I have to keep it to myself right now. Kieran, my oldest brother and the head of our family, will have me committed.
I hired Corvin Snow—aka Iceman—the cyber-terrorist responsible for the biggest global hack in decades, the one that shut the world down a few days before Christmas.
When our credit cards stopped working and we briefly lost access to funds right before Christmas, I mentioned Iceman in a fit of fury. I don’t think my brothers will connect the name Snow to Iceman. They’ll just think Snow’s another Russian hacker I found behind the old Iron Curtain.
As the Chief Technology Officer for World Trade Bank, Snow showed up to the cyber conference in Sydney last week. The exclusive event brought the best tech talent from all over the globe to deal withhismassive ransomware outage.
He waltzed around like a rockstar. All while hiding his true identity.
I’m keeping Snow a secret from my brothers until I find a way to hackhisprivate databases and grab the ransomware virus code for myself.
That’s too sweet of a weapon to pass up. Not that I would use it to hurt innocent people the way Snow did. But something that powerful will come in handy one day, considering I work for the mob.
I admire Snow’s talent and his balls. Iceman is good, but I’m better. I just don’t have a death wish to blow up the world.
I could not believe Corvin Snow’s gall to walk so casually among people he fucked over. My team unmasked him before I got to Australia. I never would have gone to that conference, but I knew Snow released the ransomware and that he’d be there.
Other companies at the conference went on a recruiting frenzy that week given how they were hit. But I walked away with the brass ring. Corvin Snow is now the Lead Project Developer for O’Rourke Technologies, a startup LLC my brother Eoghan, our consigliere, created for my new business venture.
Weapons.
“Damn, it,” I grumble, remembering I have to get one of Eoghan’s HR paralegals to send Snow all the paperwork he needs to fill out in order to work for us.
No one tried to recruitmeat the conference. I’m locked into this life with my brothers and no amount of money, perks, or vacation time, of which I get very little, will lureme away.
I’m pretty sure Lachlan, our psycho enforcer, would kill me if I tried to work for someone else. Even if I am his brother.
Divona, my childhood home, comes into view, and for the first time in years, I get a prickly feeling as a raw memory of my da hits me out of nowhere. Where the hell did that come from?
It’s like my walls have crumpled, but why?
The iron gates open when the guards see Trace and we climb the long driveway with pink trees and wavy beds of pink and white Chrysanthemums on both sides.
The Rivian stops and I hop out, confidently pushing the kitchen door open even though I don’t live here anymore. Kieran used to take meetings out of his high-rise office, but after marrying Isabella, the Italian princess who gave him two sons, he does our weekly family meetings from Da’s old office.
I greet Patricia, Kieran’s house manager, and sit my ass in his office where I wait another fifteen minutes alone. I have sleeping problems, and yet I’m the first one here.
“Fucking autocorrect keeps changing pussy to puppy.” Lachlan wanders into the office, typing on his phone and bumping into shit.
Lach is six-six, and I’d bet on a bull in a china shop to make less of a mess than he is right now.
“What are you texting?” I ask him, kicking chairs out of his way.
Shaking his head, he shows me his phone.
I want to kick your puppy.