28. Wren
WREN
Elena dropped her head into her hands. A deep groan of worry came from her.
Carina strode from side to side, marching behind her as she held Isabel. A serious glower lined her face.
Mila lingered off to the side in this office space that Elena and I had shared.
I refused to let them bring me down. I typed and clicked, working as fast as I could to check the inter-office messaging program that I still had hacked access to.
“There are no good options,” Elena said.
We’d of course heard about the collaborative attack planned against us.
The clubs and restaurants, bars, stores.
Those could be closed up, and hopefully they could be protected, but the Bratva would be spread thin.
The homes of the leaders and the spies that were on the long hit list would be harder to protect.
“They can’t negotiate their way out of this,” Carina said, her sass more evident in her accented voice.
“They can’t even defend against this,” Mila said with worry.
I shook my head, ignoring the cramp in my stomach. I was only nauseated because of the stress. Maybe something I ate.
It’s not because I could be pregnant.
Dismissing my discomfort, I shook my head. “There is another option now,” I said.
Elena lifted her head. “What?”
“Getting wires crossed,” I said.
“How?” Carina came to stand behind me as she tried to watch what I typed. I moved too fast for her, jumping on this idea. “I can’t understand what you’re doing,” she complained.
“Someone get them. Get somebody from down there and tell them to come here.” I couldn’t slow down. I refused to lose a single second. While this idea had only just come to me since I felt so off and sluggish earlier, I knew I had to act now.
Assess. Ascertain. And act.
I assessed the situation of imminent destruction.
I ascertained that many would die and the Bratva would suffer damages unless something was done.
And I was going to act in the vein of stopping them from succeeding.
“What? What are you doing?” Carina asked.
“Getting wires crossed,” I repeated.
“I’ll get them,” Mila said, hurrying out of the room.
Elena rolled her chair closer to see what I was trying to accomplish.
“Get Trojan,” I told her.
Maybe it would’ve been smarter to ask Adrik for permission to attempt this first, but I could always ask him for forgiveness later. Viktor wouldn’t let his brother stay too mad at me for being impulsive. I was going rogue, kind of, but it was too good of an idea to pass on.
“What are you doing?” Carina asked again.
“Changing their plans and throwing them all off so no one knows what they’re supposed to do,” I replied, deep in the frantic rush of revising emails and messages.
Trojan hopped on a video call. As always, his box wasn’t filled in. An icon of a person showed a blank cartoon, but now wasn’t time for me to wonder what he looked like.
“Wren? What are you doing?” he asked.
“Mix it all up. Hop on the flagged messages and emails and change it all up. Confuse them,” I ordered.
“What? It’s too late for that—” He didn’t finish, likely checking remotely what I was doing on my screen. “Oh…”
“You’re just changing up their plans?” Carina asked.
“You think that will work?” Trojan asked.
I winced at another rush of queasiness that hit me from out of nowhere.
No, not nowhere. Somewhere. Like my body adapting to the fact that I’d been carrying a baby.
“It’s worth a try.”
“You keep going with the agency,” he said, picking up on my rash idea. “I’ll start doing the same with the other branches and departments.”
I rubbed my brow, wondering if my headache was from not having coffee—which had smelled way too disgusting today—or if I was… just… pregnant.
“Um, we should hop on the EMT too. We could have the fire department show up for a false alarm and that would prevent anyone from heading into the clubs even when they’re closed and empty.”
“Good, good,” he praised.
“What about jamming up traffic?” Carina asked. “Coordinate a hack on the lights and all and stall traffic in the area of the businesses.”
“But that still doesn’t give us much time to help all the residences,” I argued.
“If they don’t need as many people guarding the businesses, that’ll be more to cover the homes,” Elena said.
I nodded, not stopping once as I rushed through skewing all the messages and coded references to the hit. They weren’t even really hiding it much, talking about it like it was just a “job”, like something that was given to them via a work order from a superior.
The men came upstairs, filing into the room. With all of them crowding in here, there wasn’t as much space for anyone to move. They were all so tall and huge.
“What are you doing?” Adrik asked. His tone was hard, but not in a cruel manner. More like he was stressed and trying his best to manage the situation.
“You can’t hope for diplomacy. You can’t fight back with limited men to cover all the locations. You don’t have enough time to properly close up and vacate all the places they’re going to hit. I’m scrambling their messages and interfering with who is supposed to be where.”
Viktor set his hands on my shoulders, looking over me.
“It might work,” Trojan said, still on the call. “It might work.”
“It might work well enough to mitigate the damage and lessen the overall hit.” I took a moment to explain how I was skewering it all, swapping times and even just outright canceling some orders. Trojan piped up again as well, telling him what he was doing.
“And that could work.” Adrik said it, but it came out like a question.
His doubt wasn’t an insult. This was a hasty idea that hit me belatedly, but because I’d been working with tracing all this correspondence already and was familiar with the communications of agents and officers being directed on different projects, it clicked for me.
None of the agents and cops were being told to do the damage, but just to look the other way when it all went down so no one was caught.
“It could work,” Viktor said, already championing my idea. I knew he would support me, but I had to have Adrik’s approval too.
I waited, tense and impatient. Between the worry that my idea wasn’t going to be good enough, that I could fail the Bratva, and the queasiness in my stomach, I felt stretched thin and unable to withstand the pressure in this room.
“Then go. Go!” Adrik stood there with his hands on his hips. “However you can pull it off. Stop them from even starting this attack.”
I nodded, grateful that he wasn’t going to be mad. I cleared my throat and kept typing.
“Maybe… give… me some space?” I asked tentatively. I didn’t want to shoo them out, but I was trying my best to concentrate.
Act.
Act.
It’s time to go.
Act.
Do it, Wren.
Staying level-headed and keeping my emotions from getting the best of me was no easy matter. But I would give it my best. I would not think about the chance that this illness was not a bug, but a baby. I would focus on scrambling as much of their communications as I could.
Viktor kissed the top of my head, not getting in my face. “Can I help?”
I shook my head, my eyes glued to the screen. “No. Thank you.”
“Nothing I can do?”
You could give me a sign that you might want to commit to having me and keeping me here for a much longer “stay” since I might be carrying your baby…
I forced a hard swallow, determined not to throw up.
“Nope. I’m fine,” I lied.
He kissed the top of my head once more as they left the room, already on their phones and calling whoever could still be moved.
Act on it.
Do what you can to spare more damage and deaths.
I cringed at the pressure to vomit.
Do what you can and then handle this truth later.