1. Nikita
Nikita
My alarm pulls me from sleep way before I’m ready for consciousness.
The incessant, loud beep is one I chose on purpose, knowing it would irritate me enough to pull my groggy ass out of bed.
I still groan as I throw back the covers and scrub a hand over my face.
I’m not ready to start the day. Seven in the morning is way too fucking early for someone who often doesn’t get to bed before three.
Crossing my room, I sit in the comfortable leather office chair and type in the complicated password for my computer before pressing the pad of my thumb on my keyboard and looking into the camera for an eye scan.
I’ve set it up so all three are required before my computer will unlock itself.
A wide yawn makes my jaw pop as I click a few keys and bring up the security camera footage at the Kappa Theta Rho sorority house.
It’s a joke to call the old cameras above the front and back door as security, but so far I’ve resisted the urge to sneak in there and plant my own.
I’m guessing my willpower won’t last too much longer on that one, but for now I lift my arms in a stretch and wait for Savanna to make an appearance.
She doesn’t make me wait long. Her first class starts at eight today, and it’s all the way on the other side of campus, so within minutes, I see her blonde head as she races out the front door of the mansion all the Kappa girls live at.
“Good morning, beautiful,” I say, not caring that I’ve gradually started talking to my computer screen over the last few weeks.
The sight of her instantly wakes me up. She’s in jeans and a red T-shirt today, and she manages to make it look like the sexiest outfit I’ve ever seen.
Her long hair is in a loose braid, and when she turns her head to wave at someone, I catch the quickest glimpse of her dimpled cheek before she races down the sidewalk.
I hit a few more keys and switch to the CCTV cameras that the university has strategically placed around campus.
They don’t cover everything, so I’m forced to wait exactly two minutes and forty-five seconds before her beautiful face comes back into view.
Even though she’s running a few minutes behind schedule, I’m not surprised when she makes a detour so she can grab a cup of coffee and a breakfast burrito.
Luckily for me it’s a high-traffic area with a camera that gives me a clear view of her as she walks up to the window and places her order.
While she waits, I study the other people around her.
Aside from several guys who are obviously checking her out, no one is raising any red flags.
I watch as she grabs her order, takes a quick bite of the burrito, and then picks up her pace as she passes a large group of students in an attempt to make it to class on time.
I follow her from camera to camera, hating the small gaps where she’s invisible to me, and when she finally makes it to her building, I drink in the sight of her until she slips inside and the door falls shut behind her.
“See you in ninety, sweetheart,” I mutter, knowing I won’t see her again until her class lets out.
Letting out a sigh in my empty room, I tell myself that this isn’t as pathetic as it seems. Her life could still be in danger.
Cupid may have taken her best friend by mistake, but when Sasha rescued Cindy and then killed the guy responsible for her kidnapping, he’d admitted that Savanna was his original target.
Cupid has been a thorn in our side for months, and I really doubt he’s going to tuck tail and run just because we burnt down one of his safe houses and killed a few of his men.
He’s going to want revenge, and he’s going to want Savanna.
He’s going to want to prove that he can take her if he wants her.
It’s my job to make sure that never happens. It doesn’t matter that I love watching her or that ever since I met her she’s all I can fucking think about. I can push all that aside to keep her safe. That will always be the most important thing.
My brain can never shut the hell up, so my mind immediately says that the only real way to keep her safe is to keep her by my side.
My cock chimes in with an or beneath me and that’s when I force myself to get up.
Staring at the brick exterior of the English department for the next hour and a half is not the best use of my time.
After a long, hot shower and a mug of coffee, I sit back down and get to work.
My dad is a hacker in our family’s Bratva, and where my older brother took after our mom with the musical talent, I took after our dad and fell in love with computers.
They’ve always made sense to me, even when I wished they didn’t.
Some things you can’t unsee, and the more you dig around, the more you find.
Before my cousins and I were born, our dads spent two years trying to find our Aunt Alina.
She’d been kidnapped and kept prisoner by a nasty son of a bitch.
My dad used his skills to infiltrate one of their auctions.
My mom was up for sale, and as soon as he saw her he fell hard and made damn sure he was the one who bought her that night.
A few years ago I found my dad’s files, and the images will haunt me till the day I die.
After I saw the photos of my mom, the ones where she’s obviously drugged and scared to death, I couldn’t let it go, so I kept digging.
The dark web is rife with the worst kinds of assholes, and, no surprise to anyone, sex trafficking is a huge market that thrives in the dark.
I know it’s not our Bratva’s concern. I know we have our own shit to deal with, but I can’t seem to be able to shut my computer off and walk away, not when I’m in the position to do something to stop it.
No one in my family knows about my secret projects, about the rings I’ve found, the anonymous tips I’ve given to the FBI, or the number of women I’ve been able to help.
I don’t want anyone to know, and I cover my tracks so no one ever will.
It’s safer this way. If I ever do fuck up, it’ll be my ass on the line and no one else’s.
While I wait for Savanna’s class to end, I work on tracking a guy who’s been eluding me for weeks.
He’s clever, always erasing his tracks, but I know there will be a time when he’ll fuck up, and when he does, I’ll be waiting.
I already have a large file with more than enough proof to put him in prison for the rest of his life.
As soon as I have his real identity and physical location, I’ll be sending it to Agent Jackson.
He heads up the human trafficking task force, and I’m guessing my emails both infuriate and intrigue him.
There’s no clean way for him to track me, and I know it must drive him crazy, but I did enough research on him to know that at the end of the day he won’t give a fuck.
He wants to take these bastards down as much as I do, and he’ll do it any way he can.
No matter how many emails I send him, it never feels like enough, but at least it’s something. Even saving just one person makes it worth the sleepless nights and the images that haunt me when I do manage to fall asleep.
When exactly ninety minutes have passed, all my attention goes back to the large monitor on my right. The other two screens I use are still filled with shit I’d rather not think about, and when I see Savanna exit the large building, she’s the exact distraction I’m in need of.
“Careful,” I whisper when I see her look down, not noticing the guy headed right towards her.
They collide, and my jaw tenses when I see him reach out and grab onto her arm.
I’m not mad that he keeps her from falling.
I’m mad that he lets the touch linger for far longer than necessary as he smiles down at her.
“Keep walking, dickhead,” I tell him, even though I know he can’t hear me. Savanna looks up and smiles. When I don’t see her dimple, the tension in my shoulders relaxes a little. She’s not giving him her full smile. It’s her polite one, the one she uses on guys who don’t interest her.
My own mouth breaks out into a relieved smile.
Savanna and I first met when Sasha tricked me into meeting the three of them for supper one night.
I saw her again at their wedding, and even though Cindy swears she’s interested in me, I have a hard time believing it.
Savanna is the kind of gorgeous that’s intimidating, but if that’s all it was, I could get over it.
I could put aside my shyness and desire to stay in the background and ask her out, but she’s so much more than that.
She’s brilliant and funny and sweet and the kind of woman who’s as comfortable in a pair of sweats as she is in a bridesmaid’s dress and heels.
In other words, she’s perfect and far too good for me.
That doesn’t mean I want some dickhole pawing at her, though. I may not feel worthy of her, and I might be dragging my feet as far as seeing her again, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want her. It doesn’t mean I don’t already consider her mine.
“That’s right, baby. Keep walking,” I say to the screen, watching as she gives the guy a friendly wave and then turns her back and jogs down the sidewalk towards her next class.
Keeping her in sight, I pull up another camera, making sure the guy keeps walking.
He gives one last look at my girl, and then shakes his head in defeat and starts walking in the opposite direction.
I stop spying on him when I see him smile at another girl, his interest clearly already on someone else.
Convinced he’s not a threat, I close the screen and maximize the one that’s showing Savanna.