Chapter 7 Hunting from the Light
Hunting from the Light
The Forger:
I've never cared for any target. Maybe I'm just hungry for a challenge that tests my intelligence. For someone who sees code the way I see patterns.
For the girl who almost found me.
The code scrolls across my laptop screen, but my focus keeps drifting to her signature embedded in my firewall logs.
Fascination coils in my chest like smoke. Never felt this strange pull toward someone I'm supposed to kill.
I lean back in my leather chair, watching the storm paint shadows across the city sky.
Seven years. Seven years since Vadim died with Anton Baev's bullet in his head.
My brother never let me work for him directly. "You're too young," he'd say, ruffling my hair like I was still twelve instead of eighteen. "Your job is the computer. Stay invisible."
So I stayed in our cramped apartment, fingers flying across keyboards while Vadim ran the streets. I hacked bank security for his crew, moved digital money through offshore accounts. Every successful job meant another deposit into the investment accounts I'd built for our future.
But computers were just tools. Vadim was the one taking real risks.
"This is it, little brother." He'd burst through our door that last night, eyes bright with ambition. "One score and we're set for life. Mom gets the best doctors in Europe. You get that computer science degree you want."
I knew it was wrong the moment he showed me the plans. Too big. Too visible. Too many moving parts for a crew that specialized in quiet jobs.
"The Basovs will see you coming," I warned him, pulling up territorial maps on my screen. "Their surveillance network covers three districts now. This isn't some street gang, Vadim. They've got resources."
He laughed, kissing my forehead like he used to when we were kids. "That's why I need my genius brother. Redirect their attention. Buy us time."
He has his mind set, no way to change it. So, I spent three days crafting digital diversions: traffic light malfunctions to slow down response times, false emergency calls to pull police to the wrong neighborhoods, camera loops to hide his crew's movements.
But the Basovs had hired someone new. Someone I couldn't predict or redirect because he didn't rely on their normal infrastructure.
Anton Baev.
Twenty-three years old and already a legend. The kind of assassin who moved like smoke and killed like lightning. No cameras caught him. No electronic surveillance tracked him.
He was everything I wasn't, pure, analog death.
Vadim died protecting his friends. Died because I couldn't hack a human being.
"Promise me," he'd said a month before the job, "if something happens, you take Mom and run. You don't look back. You don't try to be a hero."
The next day, I was on a plane with our mother and two million in cryptocurrency. New names, new papers, new life. Everything Vadim and I had planned, minus the person who mattered most.
I spent seven years building new skills, new connections, new money, and a new team. Made myself into an assassin, a better hacker. Someone who could disappear into any identity, any country, any life.
But I never forgot the name Anton fucking Baev.
The Ghost of the Bratva. The ghost I want to kill.
I've been watching him play dress-up as a common soldier for six months.
I'd thought it was deep cover for some elaborate hit. Maybe the Basovs were planning something massive, needed their best asset embedded where no one would look. But the pattern told a different story.
Every mission Anton took, every assignment he accepted, kept him in one city. Near one family. Close to one very specific girl.
Fiona Quinn.
The girl who collects information. The girl who caught my attention.
Her academic record unfolds like a love letter written in code. Mathematics major, Computer Science minor. Perfect 4.0 GPA across three semesters. The kind of grades that come from obsession, not just intelligence.
But she's only taking nine credits per semester, attending online. Part-time status for someone with her capabilities? Maybe her family isn't supporting her academic dreams.
But it's the extracurriculars that fascinate me most.
White hat hackathons, where she consistently places in the top five. Clean, ethical challenges that showcase raw talent.
Then the darker competitions, the invitation-only events where moral boundaries blur and skills matter more than conscience. She participates in both worlds with equal brilliance.
I lean forward, studying every pixel of her face. The telephoto lens caught her perfectly outside the boutique yesterday morning, before the chaos erupted.
Christ.
In this other photo, her piercing green eyes seem to look straight through anything. Hair that shifts between brown and red depending on the light, like fire contained in silk.
Beauty that stops traffic. Brains that could topple governments.
Gotta give it to Anton Baev, he has impeccable taste. He recognized a kindred spirit wrapped in deceptive innocence. And I do, too.
Fiona is the perfect woman for an assassin.
She could be a partner in every sense. The mind behind the muscle. Intelligence gathering while he handles elimination. A power couple that could reshape the criminal landscape.
No wonder he threw away protocol for her.
What would it feel like to have that mind focused on me? To be the one she looks at with calculation and desire?
The rational part of my brain knows this fascination is dangerous. Targets aren't supposed to intrigue me; they're problems to solve, obstacles to remove, nothing more.
But Fiona Quinn isn't just a target anymore.
She's a puzzle I want to dismantle piece by piece, not to destroy, but to understand. To see how all those brilliant fragments fit together to create something so compelling.
I'd laid the bait carefully. A few vulnerable entry points, some tempting data about HeartSync Dating Solutions. Breadcrumbs that led to Morrison's encrypted accounts. Standard honey trap for someone with her reputation.
I caught her. She found my system, poked around in places that should have been impossible to reach.
But she'd gone deeper.
Past the bait. She'd danced through my security like she belonged there.
I've been hunting ghosts in code for years, chasing shadows who think they can outmaneuver me. But this girl had made me work for it.
Made me respect her.
I understand why Anton Baev threw away his legendary reputation to play bodyguard. He sees in her what I see. Because she's not just pretty, she's dangerous—the kind of dangerous that makes smart men stupid and careful men reckless.
She made herself a target the moment she touched my system. But she also made herself irresistible.
I walk to the window overlooking Manhattan. People walking in fractured patterns that remind me of her code, beautiful chaos with hidden structure underneath.
Anton's better with a rifle, faster with a blade, probably deadlier in hand-to-hand combat. But I perfected something he never mastered completely.
Hiding in plain sight.
The art of blending in. Corporate camouflage. Becoming background noise in a world that's constantly churning.
That's the difference between Anton and me. He hunts from the shadows. I hunt from the light.
And right now, watching him make himself vulnerable for one Irish girl with clever fingers and dangerous curiosity, I'm not sure which one of us three is more dangerous.
I slide the laptop into my briefcase and straighten my Armani tie. Time to disappear into the crowd.
The elevator ride down forty-three floors gives me enough time to shift personas. By the time the doors open, I'm just another Manhattan executive heading to another forgettable meeting.
Gray wool coat, Italian leather shoes that cost more than most people's rent, briefcase that screams investment banker. The kind of man people look through, not at.
Perfect camouflage.
The doorman nods without really seeing me. I'm furniture to him, part of the building's expensive decor.
Outside, the storm has settled into a steady drizzle, turning the city into watercolor impressions. I pull out my phone, scrolling through market reports while walking toward the parking garage.
Time to get closer to Fiona Quinn.
Anton Baev has a weakness. A weakness I intend to exploit to get him killed. But not before letting him know that Fiona will disappear with me.