Chapter 9
chapter nine
takedown pending
The Romano Security Headquarters sat in a little gray corner of the Financial District. It was unremarkable, efficient, and exactly two point six miles from Miss Holland and the vacant townhouse next to hers.
There was no hesitation about taking the house over. It was clean, quiet, practical. A hell of a lot better than sleeping in a car for weeks just to keep her front door in sight. And if anything happened, I was less than two seconds away.
That was the excuse I’d run with anyway. It was convenience. Logistics. Nothing more.
But the truth? I’d go a hell of a lot farther than that to keep that girl safe this time around. And with the way she burned through rules like they were suggestions, I didn’t entirely trust her not to bolt once she learned when she wasn’t being watched.
The marble lobby, freshly polished, shone under my boots as I made my way to the elevator that took me to the floor where my office was situated.
Cora was in her class until four, so I had three of my best guys stationed at each of the exits and entrances to the Liberty Grove campus.
If she left, there would be eyes on her—eyes that would ensure she was safe until I was done cleaning up another mess here.
“Good morning, Mr. Romano.” Harry, my oldest and most trusted doorman, grunted from his post. “Looking chipper this morning.”
I passed him a glare paired with a half smile. “I’ll take that as a compliment. Good anniversary?”
He nodded, no emotion on his face. That just wasn’t Harry. “Best one yet. There are cookies from Sally waiting on your desk. Just as another thank you for letting me have the month off.”
I breezed past him and pressed the elevator button, the doors gliding open instantly. “It’s nothing.” I shrugged. “Tell her I said thank you.”
He nodded, the faintest tug pulling up his smile.
Fleeting conversations like that always made me realise how far we’d come as a company. Thinking back to how this whole operation used to just be me, Oscar, the spare room of our apartment, burner phones, and tampered home security systems made pride buzz through my spine.
Speaking of the devil, the steel elevator doors opened and revealed Oscar.
He looked almost out of breath, his hand resting against the wall. “We have a problem.”
I huffed, rolling up the sleeves of my shirt because I could just feel it was going to be one of those days where formality would be out the window soon enough. “I figured,” I groaned, walking toward my office. “What now?”
He fell into step beside me, his hands—tattoos peppering them like they did mine—running through his dark brown strands. “Security breach with the Alcott files. The shit we had on the guy running opposite her is gone.”
My brows barely lifted as I gripped the glass handle and walked into the icy breeze of the office. “What about the offshore files?”
“Gone.”
My steps faltered as I reached my desk, my eyes barely roaming over the box with the pink ribbon tied around it. I looked back at Oscar, noting the slight sheen of sweat on his forehead and the panic blurring his dark brown eyes. “What do you mean they’re gone?”
He walked toward me, a deadly, kind of terrified hesitation in his steps.
I’d only seen him like this at three points in his life: when the feds caught onto his illegal hacking, when I called him into my office to shout at him about it, and after what happened to Lana.
“I mean, they’re gone,” he stuttered, his hands tugging at the dark strands of his hair before dropping his arms hopelessly, frustration seeping from him. “Same thing happened with the profile we had on Amber Westbrooke.”
Amber was a new client of ours. Actress. A-list. Only seeking our services after disappearing off the acting scene out of the blue and being tracked down almost instantly by some deranged fans.
I shook my head, laying my palms flat against my desk and leaning back.
It made no sense for Amber’s files to go missing.
She was so new that she had our best measures in place.
Same with the Alcott files. Every copy of them was protected by technology that not even the government had access to yet.
Thanks to the man now sweating before me.
“But that’s—”
“Impossible?” Oscar nodded. “Yeah. I’ve been through every stage of grief trying to figure out what the fuck happened.
” Something that looked like guilt shone in his eyes as he wandered toward the window; the eight-foot-high panes that surrounded the office gave me a 270-degree view of the city.
He placed a hand on the glass, sighing before he looked back at me.
“There’s no trace that anyone ever came in or left the sites, no evidence that anyone broke into them.
” He shrugged. “They just aren’t there anymore. ”
Oscar Romano wasn’t a stranger to a data breach.
Doing the job that we did, they were almost always guaranteed to be a monthly pain in the ass.
But growing up with him, watching him master his skills—although they were only semi-legal—was what made me sleep easy at night knowing if anyone tried to take us down, they’d give up eventually.
But seeing him like this for the third time in a month didn’t sit well with me. I hated that look in his eyes that thought he’d let me down. He could never, by the way. We were a team. His fuck-ups were my fuck-ups.
“I’m sorry,” he sighed, heading over to my desk. “Usually I can snuff out who did this with a few clicks, but this time there’s nothing. Not a fucking breadcrumb.”
I spun around to catch him fiddling with the bow on the box that I knew contained some of the best cookies the world had ever known, before clapping a hand down on his shoulder. “You don’t need to be sorry.” His eyes were on me. “We’ve dealt with shit like this before and we’ll do it again.”
Although I meant that, I was starting to get suspicious about the goings-on.
Data breaches were common, but not so common that they were happening on a weekly basis with our most high-profile clients.
And the fact that Oscar—Mr. I Can Hack into the FBI’s Database with Three Clicks—couldn’t find a single clue leading to the assholes who’d stolen from us was what worried me more.
Three quiet knocks sounded on my door.
“Yeah,” I sighed, before the door opened and revealed Margaret.
Her smile emerged as she did. “Sorry to bother you, Marcus, but Meghan says she needs you in training. One of the ex-cons is giving her a hard time.”
I groaned as my palms slid across my face, the stubble I’d forgotten to shave digging into my skin. I was in no mood for anything else to go wrong today.
“Okay.” I smiled, though it lacked any humor. “Tell her I’ll be there in five.”
She nodded, pushed her glasses up, and slipped out. The door clicked shut. My shoulders dropped—then stiffened again, Oscar’s warning echoing back, sharper than before.
“I can go back through the records and see if anything else was tampered with, but it’s as if this guy blinded us and took anything he deemed valuable enough to either sell or destroy us.”
Those two words had my eyes bolting to his.
Destroy us.
“Why now?” I asked, stretching up and rounding the desk until I settled into the soft leather of my chair, pulling it close enough so I could rest my aching arms on the wood. “We’ve been the company for what… four years? Why is… whoever this is… coming after us now?”
Oscar shrugged, peeling back the pink bow and opening the box, not hesitating before taking one of my cookies. The second he pulled one out, I pulled the box away from him and slipped it into my drawer.
He snuffed. “Ass.” He shoved the cookie in his mouth, crumbs spewing everywhere. “But to answer your question, I have no idea.” He mumbled, “Do you think they’re connected?”
“They have to be.” I sat back, taking a bite of the soft raspberry and white chocolate goodness. “If there were more than one organisation that’s capable of getting into our systems without leaving a single trace, then we might as well pack up and admit that we’re fucked.”
“Maybe it’s karma,” Oscar mulled. “Maybe we’ve had too much go right for us, and it’s our turn to have our fair share of shit.”
I rolled my eyes, finishing off the rest of the cookie and rubbing my hands free of crumbs. “Either that, or someone is tired of us being the best and wants his turn on the top bunk.”
Or someone had my voodoo doll and was firing needles into it from a crossbow.
Never in my life had I felt like the world was against me, and I suppose Oscar could be right, and I was getting some bad luck after things finally straightening out for me after turning twenty-seven.
And I’d take it all over again. Having four years of success was better than anything either of us ever thought we’d get, which made me confident that we’d get through whatever rough patch this was.
Oscar cleared his throat, wiping his hands on his jeans before standing up from the desk.
“I’ve got Nathaniel and Jameson working overtime just to see if they can find anything that I might have missed.
” He rubbed his face, tiredness settling over it.
“I haven’t left surveillance since yesterday morning. ”
“It’s noon,” I nearly gasped.
“Yeah, I know. But I’ve been so fucking worried that this guy was gonna try something again after realising that whatever software he used was working like a dream. I thought that I might catch him in real time instead of waking up to more missing files.”
I stood up from my chair, rounding the desk until I reached him. “Go home.” He eyed me. “I’ll head down to the guys to see how they’re doing after checking on Meg. I’ve still got a few hours before I need to head back.”
A knowing look cast over his eyes as he walked with me. “I forgot to ask how that was going with the Holland girl.”
My sigh told him practically everything he needed to know.
“That bad?” he asked.
“Nothing I can’t handle,” I reassured him, even if I was starting to second guess myself given everything that had been going on lately.
There were too many words to describe how difficult this job was becoming.
Not only did Cora have a smart mouth and know how to use it to get a rise out of me, but the more I tried to assert myself, the more she was pushing back.
And I got it, I did. Her last experience with a bodyguard ended in disaster, and I had to remember that it was going to take time for her not to see me as the enemy.
But fuck me, she was difficult.
She’d already managed to kill the tracking on her phone. Rookie move, if she thought that was enough. The real tracker was buried in the hardware—a microchip she’d have to gut the phone to find. And I didn’t think she was the type to go a day without her lifeline.
Her friends were harmless. Wary of me, sure, but that was just her influence bleeding through.
The problem was the men. Strays kept showing up at the house like they owned the place, and it was starting to piss me off.
The tall one, Jesse Callahan, kept his head down and his mouth shut when I pressed him.
The other two? Cowboy Ken and the other English one?
They had mouths just as smart as Cora’s.
“Just remember why you took the job,” Oscar sighed. My eyes flicked to him. “It’ll get easier.”
He wasn’t wrong. The endgame—keeping her alive long enough for her to believe she could survive on her own—was the only thing holding me steady.
I’d handled clients like her before. Headstrong.
Combative. But even the most difficult ones eventually learned.
They hardened, sharpened, until they became weapons themselves.
Until people like me weren’t needed anymore.
But not a single one of those clients had her ferocity, her determination to piss me off to the point where it felt personal.
And I suppose it was. We were the ones who’d aided the asshole who ruined her life.
Sure, it was something we had no idea about, but to her we were everything she was fighting to forget, and she was determined to remind me of it every time I saw her.
But I couldn’t crack. Not yet. Not when her life was still at risk. Even though she was wearing me out and it had only been two weeks. Not to mention this text message she’d gotten at that party last Saturday had thrown me through the wringer.
Which reminded me.
“When you’re back in, there’s something else that I need you to look at.”
His brow quirked. “What is it?”
I grunted, scrubbing my hand across the back of my neck. “She got a weird text. Looked like whoever had sent it was either watching her in the room or through the cameras.”
“Stalker?”
My nose scrunched, lips pursing as I shrugged. “Too early to tell. She’s had no other communication from the number that I can see.”
The bug I’d planted was tracking all incoming and outgoing texts from her phone too, but the only ones I’d read were from any and all unknown numbers. As much as the company she kept pissed me off, she seemed to trust them and had done for nearly two years now.
“I’ll sort it,” he said, already half-grinning. “But only after I spend the night with the six-pack in my fridge and the LA Iceblades.”
I rolled my eyes so hard it hurt. “Can’t believe you still haven’t figured out they suck.”
He caught the grimace I didn’t bother to hide. “Better than the fucking Quebec Knights. Can’t believe you haven’t figured out they’re done for.”
“Agree to disagree.”
“From day one,” he shot back, clapping me on the shoulder as we headed for the door. “Send me what you’ve got on the maybe-stalker. I’ll dive in as soon as I’m back.”
My mouth tugged tight—not quite a smile, but close enough. “Thanks, brother.”
He huffed a laugh, low and easy. “Anytime.”
As my hand gripped the door, pulling it open to usher Oscar out of here, we found Margaret walking back toward us.
My mouth beat her to it as I raised my hands in surrender. “It’s fine, I’m coming,” I reassured her, my mind wandering to the other issue at hand.
Although I was surprised Meg called for backup. She’d scared me shitless throughout our entire childhood. No surprise really, considering tía Carmen, scariest woman on the Chilean coast, was her mom. Which made me wonder what on earth this ex-con was doing to make her need my assistance—
“It’s not that, sir,” Margaret rushed, her eyes growing nervous. “One of your guys stationed at Liberty Grove just had an encounter with Miss Holland before she took off in another car.” Anger flared in my closed fists. “He sounded rather teary on the phone.”
Jesus Christ.
I did not need this right now.
As my head fell into my hands, I felt a nudge on my shoulder before Oscar’s chuckle made that anger bubble to the point of explosion.
“Have fun handling that, brother.”