Page 5 of Claiming Veronica

Who did that?

Brought presents and then didn’t talk to someone? What the fuck was wrong with him?

By the time I got inside, I was fuming — stomping as I slammed the door. Okay, not slammed. Huffed and puffed as I pulled it into place and reminded myself to ask Luca to fix it. Then I booted my systems back on and pulled up my voice chat.

“Why are you in such a rotten mood? Did that Eli boy leave you a present again? Let’s see what itis,” Calia demanded, her voice crackling over the video group chat as she leaned closer to the screen as if I was going to hold something up to the camera immediately.

Calia was one of my original buddies from the old hospital days. Sadly, she lived with her dad on the East Coast, and I never got to spend time with her in person. She was busy with school, so our online time started to dwindle.

I’d been stuck in my hospital bed, weak as fuck from chemo treatments and a case of pneumonia, when my door had slammed open. Calia had slid in on her fuzzy socks, her ass hanging out, with a nurse hot on her heels. We’d been instant friends and kept in touch ever since. Calia had grown into a beauty. She was all curves and lush dark black hair. I’d admired it so much when I was young. Even now, I was envious.

I was pushed back in my gaming chair, feet up on my desk, safe from prying eyes and away from all the sex sounds my sister and her new boyfriend Pike were making every night. It seemed like they were doing it 24-7. Loudly. At least downstairs, I wasn’t in danger of accidentally running into him, eating her out on the kitchen counter, or something. Not that I would know what that was like.

When we moved here, I loved the bottom floor right away. It was isolated from the rest of the house and all mine. It had two full rooms and its own bathroom. There wasn’t even a real reason to go upstairs except for food, which was negligible since I had a fridge and a microwave. Natasha had fought with me about that but had caved after I complained about her boyfriend. I wanted to walk to the fridge in my underwear at night but couldn’t if Pike was here. I didn’t care about Luca or Enzo. They’d seen me at my worst and probably remembered my bare ass from the times that I had to wear a hospital gown. Honestly, they’d seen more of me than they wanted to.

“He did leave me something. How did you know?” I asked, biting a thumbnail. The girls would be all over me when I admitted I went outside like that.

“Because she knows you a little too well. You have that grumpy look on your face when he leaves something. Like you’re trying to poop.” Reed piped up. “You can’t deny you love the presents.” She batted her eyes and made a little heart sign. “You have it bad for him.”

“Be nice, you two. Don’t gang up on her.” Arabella was the peacemaker of our little group. “You’re not wrong, Reed,” she admitted. “Honestly, Ronnie. The guy is a killer, and you’re mooning over him. It’s not healthy.”

“I’m not mooning over him,” I snapped back. “I’m investigating.” They giggled like fucking hyenas, and after a few more minutes, I closed the chat, effectively hanging up on them. The notifications immediately started pinging through in the corner of the screen: , , and .

Ugh.

When I was little, reality was too much for me, too painful. There were hospitals, chemo treatments, nurses, and doctors—an assembly line of pain. None of the news had ever been good. Instead, I had learned to block it out. I would open my laptop and lose myself in those hidden layers of chat rooms and code. There were faraway places that my computer could take me. Places that my frail body could never go.

I would smell sea and sand instead of latex, antiseptic, and bleach.

I could go to fairs and amusement parks.

I could go on virtual dates.

I was the warrior of my dreams.

I was the conquerer.

I was the superhero.

With a computer in my hands, I could be anything. I could go anywhere.

As I had gotten older and my leukemia had gone into remission, there still hadn’t been any opportunities for me to be a normal kid. Those things had faded into the woodwork like sand disappearing from an hourglass. Instead, I had the best tutors and private nurses, away from the germs and the possible contaminants that might touch me in schools.

That made it sound as if I was like a princess stuck in a glass tower, which was accurate. My mother had left our father and the Bratva when we were small to give us a normal life, but when I got sick, she’d had to go back since we were broke. Even my mom’s fear of the Bratva didn’t stop her from bending the knee to her nephew, the pakhan of the Volkov Bratva.

My father had been a total dick. I remembered bits and pieces of him in our life and how glad I’d been when we’d left. There had been a lot of shouting in the bedroom, and I had vaguerecollections of him hitting my mom. Theirs had been an arranged marriage and an unhappy one. He was old-school Bratva and didn’t approve of much. My mother didn’t have any interest in her daughters being forced into a marriage like hers, so she’d taken us and run.

When I was diagnosed with leukemia, I remembered her and my sister agonizing over the lack of medical insurance, the hospital bills, and the hushed conversations that they’d held together. She didn’t tell me when she had caved and called our cousin for help. Maxim had been the newly declared head of the Volkov Bratva, but it was obvious when the men in Brioni suits showed up who was in charge. Natasha had sat, with her lips compressed tightly, beside my hospital bed with her disapproving glare while my mother spoke in Russian to the men.

Lucky for us, Maxim Volkov wasn’t an asshole. In fact, he was a total gem of a cousin, even if he was a criminal. He’d paid for Natasha’s school and my treatment. However, he did insist on bodyguards most of the time, which was an utter drag and a half.

I wasn’t sure I’d ever learn to live beyond lines of code or the symphony of keystrokes. The digital realm, where I could manipulate data, unravel secrets, and remain unseen, was where I thrived,so it was okay that I was still trapped between a keyboard and a screen. Lately, my obsession had been wrapped around the elusive Eli.

His absence of an online footprint had been meticulously erased or nonexistent. I wasn’t sure if it was the fact that there was nothing or if it was the fact that there were crumbs that bugged me so much. It made me curious—curiosity and the cat and all that. But I saw through the emptiness. I always felt like I was a digital archaeologist, digging through layers. It made me feel almost like a real archaeologist. That was what I’d always wanted to be — a real one out in the dust and the grime. Like Indiana Jones swinging from vines, finding treasure, brushing off artifacts, and sword fighting.

Well, that was probably not what archaeologists did in real life, but that’s what they did in my imagination, and the chances of me going on an actual dig were .000000001%, so I figured I might as well romanticize the fuck out of it.

Just like I figured that I wasn’t doing any harm with my little hacking “hobby.” So what if I was poking around? Letting myself go down rabbit holes? I’d helped my sister, at least with her last case. That had been a lot of fun, so much so that Icouldn’t help but continue chasing information about Eli.