Hacked For Love & The Dom's Songbird Read online

  I finish my bagel, my collagen drink, and half my orange juice before I let myself look back at my flat screen. The latest additions to the stories make me lift an eyebrow; the newest posting is barely an hour old.

  Donation Site for South Park Fire Victims Receives $25k In Three Days

  South Park Slumlord Facing Wrongful Death Lawsuits from Victims’ Families

  South Park Slumlord Attacks Fire Marshall During Questioning, Jailed

  I sit back, a faint smile of relief on my face. Good. A bit of a happy ending. These people don’t need my help now—someone else took care of it.

  My phone rings suddenly as I’m downing the last of my orange juice. I tense slightly, realizing it’s the front desk. I’m not expecting any visitors for hours.

  I scoop it up and connect the call. “This had better be good, Grayson,” I grumble at the building’s security supervisor.

  “I’m sorry, sir,” he replies in a slightly strained voice. “But Ms. Siddiq and Mr. Castleton are here together to see you. They say it’s urgent.”

  My eyebrows climb. My head of IT and head of security showing up for an emergency face-to-face? That is a really bad sign. “Let them up at once.”

  I’m still in my shirtsleeves as I leave the breakfast area, cuffs rolled to my elbows, brushing a few crumbs off my vest. Whatever is going on, I’ll handle it. I’ve never faced a challenge I couldn’t meet.

  Twenty minutes later, though, I’m dealing with something that hits me a lot closer to home than an apartment fire in the bad part of town. “How much did they take?”

  Laura Siddiq, a tiny woman whose round face, large brown eyes, and nervous movements remind me of a chipmunk, has handled my IT since I first made my fortune five years ago. She also handles security and upkeep for my Bitcoin wallets, miners, and accounts, which is why she has a look of horror on her face right now.

  John Castleton, meanwhile, looks a little frustrated, and I can’t blame him. He handles the physical security of my home, businesses, and fortune, which doesn’t allow him to help much in a situation like this. He’s a dapper mountain of a man with a shaved head that gleams like ebony and a coiled-spring look to him, like a tense panther.

  “Twenty-five hundred Bitcoin in total,” Laura sighs out nervously, her fingers knotting together in her lap.

  That is a third of a billion fucking dollars. The cold fact of the robbery sinks in like a stone in my gut—and when it hits the bottom, anger blooms.

  It’s not even a tenth of my liquid assets. Barely a bite. But it’s the first time that someone has dared to steal from me, and I’m suddenly ready to kick some ass.

  “Any leads?” I continue in a stony voice, and Laura flinches slightly…then blinks and relaxes slightly, as if she’d been expecting me to fire her right off.

  “Well, whoever it was is brilliant. You know how good our cybersecurity is—we worked together to create it. But this person slipped in like a ghost through a wall. There aren’t even traces of their entry into the system.” She relaxes slightly as she sees me calm a little.

  “How the hell did someone blow past all our hard work like it was nothing?” It hurts my pride to think that there’s someone out there better at hacking than I am. But then again, I haven’t been in the game for years, except to protect my own systems with Laura’s help.

  “I have no idea. I have half our team trying to find the security breach while the rest tries to find and track any transaction confirmations for those particular Bitcoins in the blockchain. Finding out where the money went and tracking it through the block records will help us figure out who took it.”

  “Uh,” John sits forward. “Sorry for being out of my depth, but could someone translate that for me?”

  I nod curtly. “Bitcoin have a decentralized database called the blockchain, which records every transaction that a specific Bitcoin goes through. It makes it easier to trace them and harder to duplicate them.”

  That catches his interest. “So, all we have to do is trace who uses them next?”

  “Theoretically,” Laura says honestly enough. “There are ways around the blockchain, and Bitcoin can be converted into other currency. Once that happens, tracking it becomes problematic.”

  “But not impossible,” John replies.

  “No,” I reply in that same firm tone. “Absolutely not impossible—not for us.”

  I look between the two of them. “Here’s the deal. I want to know where my money went and who had their hands on it. John, once we find out who is behind this, I trust you to retrieve this person so that he and I can have a little chat.”

  They both nod, and I stand to see them out. “Let’s get it done.”

  Someone is going to pay for this.

  Chapter 3

  Robin

  It’s been three days since I’ve slept. Three days since screams woke me and I came out to see the neighboring building on fire. It was worse than I thought—no sprinkler system and walls full of dry rot. The place went up like a torch.

  So now there’s no building to buy.

  My tenants and I were pulling people out of that smoky mess well before the fire department rolled up. I opened up my lobby to give everyone a warm place to gather and wait for ambulances. I put the people with no place to go up in hotels, paying for it with stolen funds from Link’s accounts again.

  Because fuck him—all of this is his fault. Except…except for the part where I could have just given him what he wanted. That choice I made—to make sure he wouldn’t benefit too much from the sale of the building, instead of prioritizing the safety of his tenants—will haunt me for the rest of my life.

  I spent the first day shuffling whoever I could from the burned building into vacancies in my buildings, getting victim assistance and insurance for everyone I could, trying to keep the guilt and horror at bay with action. These people needed help, and I was going to be there for them.

  Then I found out about the deaths.

  I should have just given that fucker what he was asking and taken over sooner.

  I’ve been a wreck since then. I’ve been working myself to the bone—too much work, too little rest, food, or time away from the keyboard. I know I’ve gotten obsessive and that I’m hurting myself. But I can’t stop.

  That was the state I was in when I finally set the Fistful of Bitcoins heist in motion before dawn today. Choosing to do it at that moment probably wasn’t my best decision either. I was way too unfocused and emotional.

  I still feel that way now, even after running errands for this mission all day. But when I started, I was downright distraught.

  I definitely wasn’t thinking of the danger to me. I’m still not. But as I doze off in my chair in front of my main computer screen, I can’t shake a nagging worry that I might have created more problems than solutions with my heist.

  It’s crazy. I’ve spent weeks covering every angle on this plan, thinking through every weakness—but my gut doesn’t know that. My instincts are used to a world where unfair horror, tragedy, and betrayal can drop on your head at any moment. I don’t trust this success.

  I’ve already started buying some necessities for a few of the people on my list. Time to start getting people their money and killing their debts now—before the hunt for me can even begin. I’m still hoping that any potential search for me will be futile and will lead all three men to the wrong conclusions—and to each other—instead.

  If they find me, it won’t be until it’s too late. They are going to help these innocent people survive whether they want to or not. And then if I die, I die.

  First though, I need to check on how well the fund for my neighbors is doing. I log onto the donation site I set up and check—and lean back suddenly, my eyes going wide.

  What the hell?

  There’s a quarter of a million dollars just chilling in the account. It was thirty thousand earlier today—impressive enough, but this is amazing. I quickly check the donor list—and end up even more shocked and confused
.

  Drake Steele, $200,000, donated an hour ago.

  No. Fucking. Way.

  A man like him can afford to drop two hundred thousand dollars on pretty much anything, just for fun. I know that both the fire and all the scandals I have unleashed on Link as punishment have been all over the news. Did it actually make Steele feel bad?

  Even if it’s just a coincidence that he chose to donate to the one fund that I set up...Steele supports businesses, not people. He’s got no public record of being charitable outside of his incubators, and though those are helpful, they are largely a tax dodge.

  Unless, of course, my research on him is incomplete. Flawed. Have I missed something?

  Did he find me out that fast, and is this his way of telling me? Or does this guy have a secret life, doing the kinds of things my parents used to do?

  I suddenly feel sick. Drake Steele got his start as a money launderer for “unknown interests.” He was a scumbag with all sorts of whispers about his past.

  But is he a scumbag now? Maybe he didn’t just get better at covering his tracks, as I had assumed, but actually changed. If that’s true, then he’s the only billionaire I have ever seen who has managed to reform himself instead of getting more corrupt over time.

  And if that’s the case, then I may have just made him some deadly enemies that he doesn’t deserve!

  I sit back in my chair, huffing softly, my blood gone cold. Should I send him a warning?

  It means giving away the scheme to one of my targets. It may even mean ruining my whole plan if he comes after me hard enough. But if he’s not the man I thought he was, then I’ll have his death on my conscience.

  I have enough deaths on my conscience already.

  I set up a crawler program to quietly gather data from donation sites about Steele’s activities. If he is making a lot of donations like this, even if he’s doing it under variants of his name or one of the pseudonyms I already found, the crawler will dig them up.

  Meanwhile, I can start doing my real work, praying that I can settle my mind a little with some more altruistic therapy.

  I have randomized my list of needy people. I know it’s going to take me a hell of a lot of time to get everything handled, but I have a lot of money to parcel out and I need it to happen fast. I wish I had some help at this, but as with everything else, I’m working alone.

  The first name is Lois Pinoy. She’s a hospital nurse who has ended up on disability leave because of tendon issues in her arm caused by turning patients twice her size for years. Widowed mom of three. I bring up her photograph and look into the face of a petite woman in pink scrubs, smiling tiredly while standing behind her small, grinning son’s wheelchair.

  Her eyes are very gentle.

  “Hi there, Lois.” I smile at the screen, feeling a little sense of connection that eases a deep hollowness inside me. “This is the wealth-redistribution fairy coming at you with a big dose of hope and help.”

  She uses the same password for everything. That makes it easy for me to get into places that a black-hat hacker would maliciously take advantage of. Bank accounts, mortgage account, medical accounts. I wish I could drop her a note somewhere telling her not to do that, but I have to move as invisibly as possible.

  She owes the bank for her little, ramshackle house, which is also in need of repairs. She’s deep in the red on credit cards, and by the looks of her purchases, she’s just trying to get by while she can’t work. Her son’s medical debt doesn’t help; he needs physical therapy and prosthetic lower legs that she can’t pay for.

  Total need: $128,000.

  Paying off those debt records and arranging for the prosthetics, fittings, and physical therapy all do my heart good. I even manage to get my mind off of Steele for a while.

  In the past I’ve tried just going into the hospital and bank systems of people in trouble and changing the numbers, but the discrepancy is always caught and corrected. Now, though, someone is actually paying off those bills with real money. It’s just not a someone anyone would expect.

  Fifteen minutes from when I first entered her accounts, I print out one double-sided page on Lois and what was done for her and her family before purging her information from my system. Then I move onto the next random person.

  Michael LaFloret, a medical cannabis user picked up just over state lines with a legally bought ounce. Released upon full legalization, but his record stands. Can’t get a job now that he’s free.

  Michael wants to start his own business, but first he has to get out of the red with his landlord who is about to throw him into the streets in the middle of winter. I pay off his debts and pad his account by $10k, which is the maximum gift amount he can get in a year without being taxed on it.

  Total need: $14,000.

  Godspeed, Michael, and I hope you get your bike shop up and running.

  It goes on like that. It doesn’t take me long to fix someone’s financial problems, print their file, clear them from my system and move on—as long as I keep focused. Fortunately, that’s not difficult; if anything, I’m too focused.

  Some take under five minutes. Others: half an hour. Many of the individuals on the list are parts of a larger family, which means I can clear up to ten at one go. Others are alone, which is the source of some of their problems.

  I can sympathize.

  It’s going to take months to go through all this even if I devote twelve to fifteen hours a day to it. I may get caught before it’s done or even killed. But I won’t give up until I’m done—they’ll have to drag me away from my list and what I’m trying to do.

  This is giving me life even as it gives them life. For once, I matter. I’m not just my uncle’s throwaway girl. I’m important to these people, and what I do matters—even if nobody ever knows my name.

  I save a hundred people in a few hours, and then I start sending out e-mails about the fire fund’s success to my former neighbors. They need to start getting their money and supplies, too.

  It’s getting light outside, and my head is throbbing before I finally sit back and stretch, yawning hard. I think I might actually be able to get some sleep now. But as I look up at the folder in the corner of my screen, I know I have something to check on first.

  When I do, I swear under my breath.

  The crawler search on Drake Steele has dug up scores of entries. He’s been making private donations to people—well away from venture support—to the tune of millions per fiscal quarter for at least half a decade.

  Guilt money? It doesn’t matter. What matters is that he’s already doing the right thing, at least more than I’ve ever seen his kind do, and I just punished him anyway. And now, he could die.

  I let out a little sob of dismay, covering my mouth with my hand as the screen blurs in front of me. Oh god, I fucked up.

  How did this happen? I was so careful. Was I biased in choosing him because of his past? Or is it because he’s just so annoyingly...perfect, as well as being rich?

  I squeeze my eyes shut, horrified with myself but determined to fix this. Focus.

  One last thing to do before my exhausted body forces me to bed, so I can rest without nightmares. I create an untraceable e-mail account; I put Drake Steele’s private e-mail address in the recipient field; and I send him the damn warning.

  I’d rather die myself than risk getting a decent man killed.

  Chapter 4

  Drake

  The exercise yard is a blank gray box without a roof. We can just barely see the tops of the tallest Siberian pines on the outside if we look, but no one ever does. We’re too busy watching each other.

  If you put too many of even the gentlest animals together in too small of a cage, they will start fighting. Convicts are not gentle animals. And there are a hundred men stuffed into this yard, which was built for about fifty.

  I’m the youngest man in there—still a boy, really—not that anyone cares. My skin is a blank slate—no needle has touched it yet and no knife. That’s about to change,
but not because I invited it.

  My cousin had told me to ride my bike around the neighborhood and keep watch while he sold something I never saw. When the police roared up, I thought they were there for something else—until they shot at him. Now he is dead, and though I never knew why I was watching things for Leonid, they tried me as an adult.

  Now I am here alone in this prison for killers.

  Don’t you dare look scared, I remind myself. I walk quietly around the edge of the yard, not getting too near anyone, just trying to stretch my legs while my breath steams around me and occasional snowflakes drift past my face. I can feel dozens of icy stares on my back.

  Heavy bootsteps trail behind me. I tense and stop, squashing myself against the fence, praying that the owner of the boots will pass and go his own way—away from me.

  “Hey. Kid.”

  Sick with terror, I turn around, trying to remind myself: I have done nothing. I have offended no one. “Yes, sir?”

  I look up into a scarred, grinning face with an uneven beard and then feel a hard blow to my gut. I stare up at him in shock as I double over, completely confused. He’s laughing and so are his friends.

  The bruising feeling spreads, accompanied by cold nausea. My hands are getting wet where I hold myself. I watch him walk back to his friends, still wondering why he’s done this, and I see him toss the bloody shiv over the fence and wipe off his hand...

  I wake up holding my scar, letting out a little shout as I sit up. I orient myself almost instantly, but my heart keeps pounding. “Unh...shit,” I mutter, waiting for my breath to even out before reaching for my water glass.

  I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, I think as I swallow the water down without tasting it. It puts a small dent in my headache, but I know it will take a while for the throbbing in my temples to clear. If I get stressed enough, the nightmares come back, and all my skill with lucid dreaming won’t let me grab control of them.