Page 125 of Hate to Love You

Chief IT & Operations Officer, of Nikotech Investments.

I snort.

Only Ana gets to talk to me like this. But it’s clear that she’s nervous about the detective, and rightly confused by the fact that I was at Albertos with Abby. I know she’s already hacked the police department’s server, so her comment about the grapevine is likely just her way of covering our asses in the event of any situation in which we might be required to submit email transcripts.

Detective Hevon claimed that he was only stopping by as a courtesy, and from what Ana learned from hacking the police department email server, the cops didn’t actually have any security footage from the street cameras that showed me there with Abby. If not for the register of reservations that day, they wouldn’t have even known that I was there.

Which would’ve been preferred, but I’m not worried.

However, Ana’s question regarding the detective asking about Abby is interesting.

Because it did strike me as odd that he remembered Abby’s husband’s death.

And now she knows that I know, that she lied about him.

The look on her face was priceless though.

The other interesting part was the missing footage. Obviously, the Detective hadn’t divulged that information, but from the email chain between the Detective and his sergeant we learned that the street cameras were conveniently down the day of the bombing. The email between them also stated that even though Albertos had cameras on the inside, as well as on the front and back of the building, they too had been disabled that day and the footage from inside the restaurant was severely corrupted.

Cal was right. This was professional.

Someone not only knew how to hit Albertos, but they also knew how to make that hit effectively disappear. And so even though there was a giant crater where Albertos used to be, proving that a bomb had gone off, there was little visual proof.

But there was something else.

Those are steps that we take to cover our hits, and skills I have specifically fostered.

Few organizations in the world are set up like mine, with men trained to do what mine are trained to do: make “messes” look like accidents.

When Polina married Igor, part of our tradition was for Igor’s father to gift my father something “valuable.” And at the time, because of the business we deal in, that gift could only be one thing: men. And I learned from Dimitris and Jaxon Pace that having more boots on the ground than your enemy is what gave mafia families the advantage.

So, on Igor and Polina’s wedding day, our family mafia grew by a hundred strong men, sent to us from Igor’s hometown of Moscow.

These new troops were just a bunch of young, naive orphans and misfits, who were just eager to belong somewhere. But I saw their potential. I saw them as ripe for molding into whatever need our family had. And because my father died shortly after their wedding, I soon had the power to dictate which direction our new manpower would be applied.

Because the FBI and the CIA were developing all kinds of tracking and monitoring systems that were making our industry harder, I felt that to combat the powers that be, espionage and cybertechnology was going to be a skill my men needed to have. So, I set about training them to do what the rest of the underworld does…only better.

And with Ana by my side, we’ve been excelling above and beyond our “competition” for years.

But unlike my diversified portfolio, Cillian McCleary’s “clean income,” is significantly smaller, as he has less resources than I to launder it. And because dirty money can’t pay for clean men, his mafia is younger and far cruder. The men he attracts are inexperienced and volatile, so instead of cleaning up the messes they make, they just make more messes to cover them up.

Cillian’s team has never had the tech, or the technical intelligence of people to know how to stitch up a job this immaculately.

However, now it seems they do.

And they want us to know it.

I choose not to respond to Ana’s email, deciding that if Cillian has the brainpower to get past any of our firewalls, I don’t need him getting his hands on emails that could potentially incriminate me, or the company.

Pulling out my phone, I dial my digital sister, but am greeted immediately by her voicemail.

I guess it’s pretty early, considering she’s usually up til late.

“Call me when you get this, but don’t send any other emails regarding Detective Hevon,” I say into her machine. “And I’m sure you’re already working on this, but I’m going to need you to decipher that interior footage. It’s imperative.”

As I set the phone down, I run my hand through my hair.

That footage is going to be necessary when trying to meet with the Sicilians. This warrants my second phone call, to Lev, who I know will be awake and at the gym, per his usual routine.