Chapter 2
Michael
“Billy! Beer me,” I call out to my younger brother as I walk into our vast stainless-steel kitchen. He nods and digs out a longneck for me out of the drink fridge, handing it off as I walk up.
“Hey, man. How’d it go today?” He stifles a yawn; that new-dad sleep deprivation is really getting to him.
“Uncle Ezio destroyed another laptop’s hard drive,” I sigh as I open the beer and take a swallow. It’s hot as hell for San Francisco in June, and Ezio never uses his damn air-conditioning. I’ve been sweating in his living room for most of the afternoon.
“For fuck’s sake. Porn again?”
I nodded, and he rolled his bright blue eyes. Billy is pretty much a mini-me: my same height but leaner, with similar features and the same wavy coffee-colored hair. He’s in responsible-dad-with-a-business drag: nice slacks, wingtips, and a light button-down. Me? The first thing I did after my shower was pull on my jeans and a black T-shirt.
“Yeah, well, embarrassing-ass Uncle Ezio threw a fit about being caught again when he was the one who filled up his whole laptop with viruses. I’m fixing things, and his wife and teenage daughters are yelling at him. I finally put my damn noise-canceling headphones on so I could work in peace.” I take a swallow of my beer, leaning on the wall next to the fridge.
He just laughs. “Well, that’s going to be fun when the holidays roll around, and we have to look at his dumb ass with a straight face.”
“I just had to do that for four goddamn hours. It wouldn’t piss me off, except somehow, the guy never learns. I explain it to him, he says he understands, then he turns around and does the same dumb shit all over again. I’d expect that from a fourteen-year-old kid, not a damn church deacon.”
“Everybody’s got at least a few really ridiculous people in their family,” Billy observes. “I mean, hell, we put up with you, right?”
“Ha ha.” My family “puts up with” me because I’m the most brilliant computer guy this side of Silicon Valley and the best hacker in the whole West Coast mob, hands down. My family’s relied on me for years for everything from electronic money laundering to helping my grandma figure out her new phone. “Anyway, I’m giving it another three months before I’m over there doing the same damn thing all over again.”
“Hell, I’d be surprised if he makes it that long. The guy just plain doesn’t learn.” He takes a swallow from his own beer and looks at me. “So, what happened with Leanne, anyway?”
I wince. Leanne is an ex—a recent ex—only three months ago. We were pretty damn serious, though. Two years together. I even started looking through engagement ring catalogs before things soured over the last few months.
“The whole mobster-princess thing didn’t do it for me, in the end.” That is a huge understatement, but Billy doesn’t need to know the whole play-by-play of the shitstorm that had happened between Leanne and I.
Leanne Castellucci is the spoiled daughter of a Capo who is set over a part of the East Bay, and she had latched onto me as the best way to rebel against Daddy. But as it turned out, her rebellion against Daddy is mostly for show and her own entertainment.
Her parents never approved of me. It was the only reason she was with me, in the end, besides the sex and the nice dates. But she wasn’t much of a grown-up. Being told no was a berserk button for her, and I just got tired of it. I loved her, but what she offered in return was more like a babysitting job after a while than a relationship.
It hurt. I’m the kind of guy who wants to get serious with a lady, not waste years of my life on dating and hookup apps and meeting a new woman every weekend. But two weeks after she stormed out of our hotel room for the last time, I started feeling... relief mixed with pain.
That was when I knew she had done me a goddamn favor by dumping me before I could put a ring on her.
It’s still a sore topic. I force a smile. “Anyway, you know her parents hated me.”
“Yeah, I thought that didn’t bother you.”
I shrug. “It didn’t when I thought we were really in love. But when I realized I was kind of a prop in the games she played with her dad, I suddenly didn’t want anything to do with her anymore.”
“Oh, yay. Wish I’d known that sooner. My wife’s still Net friends with her.”
“Damn. Well, I’m not gonna be petty about it if she wants to stay friends, especially online. So don’t worry about it.” I take a swallow of my beer.
“I feel way out of touch.”
“You were vacationing with your family for the last two and a half months, bro. Don’t even worry about it. I get out of touch sometimes myself. It happens.” Another swallow of my beer.
“When do you think you’ll start dating again?”
I scoff. “Hell. Guess it depends on how lucky I get in finding someone. I really need to be careful about the next one. No more goddamn daddy’s girls, no more drama queens, and no more selfish girls. Holy shit.”
“That means getting to know ‘em. Think you can pry away from your computer long enough for some serious dating time?” he teases me.
I shake my head. “Just call me a nerd and be done with it.” Everyone in the family was on me about my lack of a steady relationship at 30. At least Billy has been just poking fun.
“So, if those princess types aren’t your type,” he asked after draining his bottle, “what is?”
I didn’t have to think about it long. Leanne’s cousin, Arya. A fucking gorgeous nerd girl who thinks we’re competitors and can’t stand me because of that . If she had so much as smiled at me before now, I would have left Leanne and her bratty garbage for her in a hot second.
I had been drawn to Arya ever since we first met at one of the Don’s events back when I was a junior in college. She was a freshman and one of the only people in the entire school who could keep up with me in computer science.
She has a hell of a lot of raw talent, she works hard, and she is so goddamn smart. The problem has been, from the moment we met, that she has apparently seen me as a rival who doesn’t take her seriously.
I guess she isn’t one for banter or teasing. Maybe it’s a sore spot for her somehow. But damn it, ever since those early days she had—and has—acted like I’m personally out to make her look bad as her family’s computer person.
I wasn’t. I’m not. When I thought of her, I thought of a house with a giant computer setup and a couple of nerd kids. Hell, sometimes, I still do.
But other times, I just think about screwing that brittle, angry attitude right out of her. I think about spending the whole damn night making her shake with pleasure. I think about waking up to her and starting all over again.
Instead, I send her teasing emails to try and goad her into answering back, and I keep an eye out for her at big family gatherings, though she never seems to let me get near her. She acts like I’m some obnoxious dude who can’t take a hint. Maybe I am a little, except for the obnoxious part. But I am definitely stuck on her.
Back when I was dating, I had managed to bury the feeling and focus on my partner. But now that I’m not, she’s on my mind a whole hell of a lot again. Not just while I’m awake. I’ve even started having sex dreams about her again.
I lick my lips, pushing the memories of those really fucking hot dreams away. “Well, there’s someone who sure fits the bill. Problem is, she hates me and probably thinks I’m an asshole.”
“You kinda are, bro.” But his eyes are dancing.
I roll my eyes. “No, I mean a real asshole. The kind who looks down on her and wants to give her a hard time. She doesn’t even take banter well.”
“So? Neither does my wife. Don’t banter at women unless they start it. Some of them are good at it, but a lot really don’t like it.”
I frown thoughtfully. “Well, you’re the one with the good marriage. I’ll see about dropping that kinda bullshit when I try to talk to her again.” At this point, I’ll try anything, even cutting back on the sarcasm.
When I get back online later this afternoon, there’s an email waiting for me that I wasn’t expecting. Two months ago, my father got my help inserting a new maid into the Castellucci household to act as our spy. I didn’t like doing it, but Arya’s fucking parents are overambitious and sometimes aggressive about it. We have clashed with them over territory for years.
Now, though, the spy has found something and sent me an encrypted email about it from an Internet café. I peer at it, a frown deepening on my face. “Shit.”
Arya is about to do something superambitious: an electronic heist pulled on a billionaire. Not a huge amount by billionaire standards, just $5 million, but definitely enough to give the Castelluccis an edge in the funding department. And if her method actually works, she can use it over and over again on people so ridiculously wealthy that they might not even notice.
I don’t even know how she’s going to pull it off. I wish I could get right into the code she’s using and examine every line because this isn’t just ambitious; it is incredibly difficult to pull off. Hacking overseas banking and wire transfer systems is also dangerous. It’s a good way to end up at a government black site somewhere, with guys with no insignias on their uniforms.
But if she can really get in, get out with the money, and not get caught, I want to see that.
I have to report this to my father. The maid we placed is technically his source, not mine. But I’m not looking forward to it. I’m actually pretty damn worried about what he’s going to do—or make me do—when he finds out.
I really don’t want to give Arya any more reasons to hate me.
My father calls me into his office after dinner, and I bring him the printout of the email. My father is barely computer literate. He wants everything printed out, written out, or called in. No emails, no messenger, no texts, not even encrypted. He doesn’t really trust any of it.
Fortunately, he trusts me.
Dad doesn’t look like the patriarch of a mob family. He’s the shortest guy in the family, he’s bald on top, and he looks a little like Santa Claus’s younger brother. Some folks make jokes about my real dad being the mailman when they see it together, but no; I just take after Mom’s brothers.
The thing is, when he speaks, people listen. He has this way of speaking with quiet authority, never raising his voice except when he’s really pissed off, never making threats, never barking orders. No matter the lack of volume, he gets people to listen. And he gets people to worry about what will happen if they don’t.
“What have you got for me, Mike?” he asks, his dark eyes searching my face. He frowns a little at something he sees there, and I quickly distract him by handing over the printout.
His eyes flick over it. “That Castellucci girl again. What the hell is she up to now?”
“Hijacking an overseas bank transfer and siphoning away a few million, nothing too exciting.” I choose my words very carefully.
“Nonsense. If it wasn’t a real innovation, you wouldn’t be talking it down like that.” He knows me way too well. He goes back over the printout. “It’s too damn bad we can’t just recruit her. So, when is this going down?”
I give him the scheduled date and time of the transfer: two days from now at 3 a.m.
He considers. Then, he sits back in his chair and tells me the last thing that I want to hear.
“All right, Michael. I need you to sabotage this heist.”
I stare at him in shock. “Wait... what?”
“What’s unclear?” He shifts in his chair and peers at me over his gold-rimmed glasses.
“You want me to sabotage the transaction so she can’t pull the cash?” I hope to hell he doesn’t mean get her caught. I won’t do that. I hate having to deal with refusing my dad anything related to business, but that’s a bridge too goddamn far.
“I’m not saying don’t let her take the money. I’m saying don’t let her keep it.”
I let out all my air. “Steal from her? From the Castellucci family accounts?”
“If she can somehow interrupt an international wire transfer and divert those funds, then you can figure out how to interrupt the transfer to her family accounts and get us that money instead.”
I think about it. It’s a tall order, but I can handle it. I really don’t want to, because it’s her, and any test of my skill against hers, I want it to be... friendly competition. Not doing something that’s going to leave her empty-handed in front of her family.
“Michael?”
“I’m thinking. Hang on a second, please.”
“Michael, let me make myself clear.” He takes a sip from his vodka and cranberry juice and looks at me pointedly. “I know you have some interest in this woman, but right now, her loyalty to her family makes her a liability to us. We can’t afford to let her keep using this technique to line their pockets.”
“We could just use the same technique,” I start to suggest, but he waves a hand dismissively.
“Not good enough. I fully intend to have you reverse engineer what she’s done and take advantage of it, but we don’t want the Castelluccis to be doing the same.
“The Castelluccis are very backward. From what we’ve learned so far, it looks like they’ve been trying to discourage Arya from working as their computer expert at all. If she fails to follow through on any promises to them, she and her technique will lose any remaining credibility with them.
“So... steal the five million, steal her technique, and undermine her family’s confidence to ruin her career and make them reject that same technique?”
Shit. Shit. Shit. I do not want to do this.
“Is there any reason why you can’t make this happen?”
I open my mouth to make an excuse—any excuse. Anything I can do to stop this from going forward while still appeasing my dad. But there is nothing.
He stares at me expectantly.
“No,” I say finally, caving in and hating myself for it. “I’ll get it done.”