Page 66 of Shattered Veil
“I hired him when I was in Sydney.”
“What?” Riordan shrieks. “He nearly breached our network.”
“I know better than all of you what he did. He did it to hundreds of businesses and financial websites. It wasn’t personal. He cast a wide net and our sites and accounts got swept up in it.” I take a breath. “His name is Corvin Snow.”
With Eoghan conveniently out of the room, I don’t have to worry that his HR paralegal mentioned that name to him.
“How do you know it was him?” Kieran asks, sitting back. “I assume he didn’t admit it.”
“Of course not. I tracked his digital fingerprints and his signature code entries. And I have state-of-the-art backups that not only prevent attacks, but reverse-engineers them. I had a special team tracking him down. Then he had the balls to show up at the global conference three weeks ago.” I sit down. “The bank he was working for didn’t renew his contract. So, I scooped him up.”
“Why in the world would you want a man like that anywhere near our network?” Kieran asks, anger in his eyes.
“I’m logging his keystrokes. I threw a ton of money at him and have him doing bullshit coding to see his skills firsthand.” I take a breath.
“What’s your end game?” Riordan asks, leaning toward me, looking concerned.
“To learn his methods. The thing about serial criminals, they keep it all bottled up when they’re actually dying to talk about it. He thinks he’s in a safe space right now. Only a few of my most trusted developers know who he reallyis. They’re gushing over him. He’s eating it up and spilling more and more to them. I’ll have that ransomware code he wrote, or at least the framework, in a month.”
“You’re playing him,” Riordan says. “How do you know he’s not playing you?”
I don’t. But I’m fairly certain.
“Trust me. He’s got an ego the size of the Empire State Building. I’ve been feeding into that. I gave him an office. I took him to dinner. I invited him to the fundraiser gala next week.”
“That may work for a while, but he’ll eventually get bored and want more,” Kieran says.
“Or get on your nerves,” Riordan adds.
“I’ll have what I need from him by then. But there’s more.” I stare at eyes like mine except different colors, eager for me to continue. “Hisdaughteris my new assistant. It was a condition he made for me.”
I don’t know if the tone of my voice changed, but the way my brothers’ eyes widened when I saiddaughter, I might as well have played a video of me fucking Ella for them.
“Daughter?” Kieran drawls.
I go to answer, but Eoghan comes back in, zipping his pants. “Jillian will be at your house Monday morning.”
“Great.” I put my head down but lift it at the silence. “What?”
“I asked you about hiring the man’s daughter.” Kieran’s voice is low and sounds miffed from being interrupted.
There are fucking five of us, what does he expect?
Shaking my head, I say, “I only agreed to hire his daughter because he told me she got abused by a boyfriend six months ago. She moved with Iceman to Australia when he got an assignment there. He’s worried about her. He’s got issues, but he loves his daughter. Andwell...” I close my eyes ready to light the bomb I dropped. “I fucked her in Los Angeles without knowing who she was.” I won’t mention that I mistook her for an escort or that I gave her twenty-thousand dollars.
Who I fuck is my own damn business, and I’ve always been discreet. Although the way Eoghan smirks at me suggests he’s figured out what my large cash withdrawals have been for.
“I’d only found out about her ex after I agreed.” I don’t mention he’s a cop. Yet. “I want to keep her close to me so the eejit ex doesn’t get any ideas that he can hurt her.”
“Close, as in on your cock? She works for you,” Eoghan says with unmitigated gall, considering the crimes he committed in Las Vegas with Jillian.
I glare at him.
“Her father has no idea?” Lachlan says, playing with a knife.
“Snow didn’t crash Kieran’s plane recently, did he?” Although that might be the least of what Snow would do to us if he knew we were on to him.
Or what he’d do to just me if he knew I slept with his daughter.