5. REVEAL
FIVE
reveal
Enzo
The glow from six monitors paints the room in shades of electric blue as I enter Eva’s office. Hudson will arrive soon and we’re going to compare what he and Eva could find on Pippa Saint James—the redhead I’ve known for less than twenty-four hours but obsessed over for twenty-three of them.
Neither Eva nor I wanted to sleep in our parents’ room after they died, so we turned it into her hacker paradise. The high-end monitors and tech help her run our operation from the safety of our mansion. Keeping her safe is my top priority.
She’s locked in, zooming in on a grainy parking lot camera feed, flagging plates, tracking patterns.
Right now, Eva is supporting an operation for our Virginia crew.
She holds up a hand without looking in my direction.
“I’m mid-op and two keystrokes away from making someone disappear. Don’t make it you.”
I chuckle but stay otherwise quiet. I’m a smart brother, I know when to let my sister work her magic.
Two minutes later, the deal on-screen wraps.
She swivels to face me. “You owe me a quiet entrance next time,” she says dryly. “Crew just landed facial recon on the target. They’ll finish it tonight.”
“Great work, thanks. Hudson should be here any minute.”
“Ah, time flies when you’re having fun, I guess.” She checks her watch and turns back to her desk. “I pulled what I could find on Pippa Saint James, which wasn’t much. Here, sending it to you both now. Hopefully Hudson found more.”
“He said he put Luna on it.” My sister's cheeks flush.
Hudson and I like to tease her about her not-so-secret-crush on Luna. She claims it’s a professional crush only, “hacker respecting hacker vibes,” but we like to tease that it’s more.
“Well, if anyone can get the real dirt on this woman, it’ll be her,” she replies wistfully.
“Mhm. Well, you’re as good of a hacker as she is, so…”
She scoffs. “You know that’s not remotely true but thank you for believing in me.”
“E, you’re single-handedly keeping the Luciano crew in business and out of trouble. The way technology has changed in recent years, I would never have been able to keep up.”
“Well that much is obvious.” She’s always been snarky and I love that about her. She stands and we head for the den.
Hudson always enters the property through our back entrance to remain undetected.
Few know Hudson is part of the Luciano crime family.
Besides Eva and me, only my head of security, Niko, my driver, Luca, and our family chef, Marco, know the truth.
They are my most-trusted men. And they are trained to keep my family alive. Hudson is family.
As we settle into the large couch, the back door opens. Hudson strides in with a huge smile on his face.
“Wow, someone had a good day,” Eva teases.
“Shit, how did you two do it? How did you finally find the real name of my girl, Jane?”
Wait. What?
“What do you mean?” I ask.
“Pippa Saint James. The name you asked me to run. My Jane Doe from the club! I’m so fucking pumped! Thank you for finding her real name. Seriously! How did you do it?”
Eva bursts out laughing. “Well, this is entertaining,” she chokes out through laughter.
My brain is still trying to compute. Hudson has been waxing poetic about this woman from the club for almost a year—a sexy redhead.
There is no fucking way.
Eva’s continuous laughter breaks me from my thoughts. I look up to see Hudson’s smile has sobered.
“Shit. What’s going on?” he asks.
“Pippa is the woman from The Vault who was with McCarter last night,” Eva explains. She’s a little too giddy at this revelation.
Hudson and I stare at each other, blinking. I’m trying to remember what I said to him last night after I met her.
“Huh,” Hudson starts. “Okay, well yeah, shit. Okay.” He mumbles a few curses, as is his way. “Well, based on what we found out about her, that makes sense. She is a DC staffer. Must have been there for work.”
I clear my throat. “Yeah, let’s compare notes. Like I said, I had this hunch when I saw her last night that something was off.”
“Off how?” Hudson asks.
“When I saw her with McCarter, everything about that scene screamed that she was working a mark. She was baiting him. And he was eating out of her hand,” I explain.
“Yeah, that sounds like my Jane,” Hudson says. He doesn’t attempt to keep the adoration from his voice.
I close my eyes and take a deep breath.
Hudson has been sleeping with Pippa. Pippa and Hudson… Well, fuck!
This is complicated. Not just because I think she may be up to something, but because she’s the first woman who’s truly captured my interest in a long time.
Maybe ever, if I’m being honest with myself.
The way my body came to life just being in her presence.
And my best friend found her first? Fucking hell.
“Hudson, Enz said you had Luna run her file. What did she find?”
“I’ll send over what she found. It wasn’t much.” Hudson pulls out his phone.
“Same,” Eva admits. “Which is kind of odd in itself, right? We have her employer, alma mater, the usual résumé fluff—Yale, PoliSci major, Chem minor—but zero social media, which in DC, is basically a felony. She’s either allergic to cameras or hiding something.”
“You’re right about that. Looking at these files, it seems you and Luna found the same information.” He pauses. “Hm…I guess my hunch about Luna was off then,” he says almost absentmindedly.
“What hunch?” Eva asks.
“She was caught off guard when I mentioned Pippa’s name. Or at least I thought she was. It wasn’t anything obvious, I’ve just worked with her long enough to know her reaction seemed off, but maybe it was nothing.”
“Interesting.” Eva types a few things into her device. “Well, I certainly don’t see any overlap between Luna or Pippa. Unless you count the fact there is almost no information to be found about either of them. Much to my disappointment.”
Hudson clears his throat. “We don’t really have much to go on here, but I am curious what a staffer for Cramden is doing meeting with the Speaker of the House?”
We all agree it is odd. Eva takes a quick look at McCarter’s calendar.
We have phone-mirroring and tracking apps installed on the devices of all of our clients.
They don’t know that, but they do know we are an organized crime ring, so it’s really on them for not considering the means we utilize to keep them under our thumb.
“The Speaker’s calendar says he was meeting with Pippa about an upcoming gala. Oh, this is the opening of the new presidential ballroom. The Speaker is the official host, so maybe there’s nothing to see here,” Eva says.
“Yeah maybe,” I say.
We fall into silence as we run more searches on our devices.
I’m also distracting myself from this Hudson development.
Eva interrupts my thoughts. “Shit, guys, files just dropped on McCarter.”
“What do you mean?” I ask.
“I have Google Alerts on all our clients for media article mentions and such. I just got a notification about McCarter. I’m skimming some headlines now, but it looks like a bunch of files were dropped linking him to child sex trafficking, child abduction, and child pornography.”
This is the third client of ours in the last twelve months who has been exposed as a predator. How do we keep missing this?
My eyes meet Hudson’s. Both of us likely thinking of his mom.
My family has never touched trafficking. My grandfather despised it and my father did, too. They allowed sex work, though, something I never fully agreed with. Hudson, Eva, and I decided those operations ended when our parents died ten years ago.
Hudson’s mom was a high-end escort. Got into it young as a runaway, had Hudson in her teens. The likelihood his father was a sleazy politician is high, but his mom never revealed his identity. She was a good mom, raised him the best she could on her own.
Unfortunately, she believed the lies those men sold her.
Once or twice a year, she’d meet a client who promised her the world.
He “loved” her and would take care of her and Hudson.
They always promised to set her up in a nice home, with a new car.
She’d tell Hudson their luck was going to turn around, promise him the world.
Hudson caught on far sooner than his mother.
He was a junior in high school when he discovered what his mom did for work.
We didn’t know it when we became friends at such a young age, but his mom was part of my father’s business.
I was so angry at my dad when I found out.
He eventually convinced me it was the reason he and my mom took Hudson under their wing.
He promised he’d take good care of Hudson’s mom, too.
When we were in college, she committed suicide.
For that reason—and many others—I ensure all our clients know that we don’t tolerate abuse against women or children. If we find out any of them are involved in trafficking or exploitation of any kind, especially against children, we take care of them ourselves.
Which is why I don’t understand how McCarter could have been doing this right under our nose. As I look through the pictures, emails, and texts, it’s clear to see the depravity he has been up to.
“How does this keep happening?” Eva whispers, echoing my own thoughts.
Silence stretches between us, thick with the shared realization that we missed something big. Again.
Hudson finally speaks. “Are they crediting TruthDrop again?”
“Not yet, not that I’m seeing, but it seems to be the same blueprint. Anonymous photos delivered to all major media outlets,” Eva answers. “No one has ever claimed credit for the leaks, though, so who knows?”
“Wait a second. Could Pippa be part of this online group?” I ask. Details click together in my mind. “I mean, she was with him just last night. That might not be a coincidence, right?”
“Maybe. But they were having a public meeting about a gala. How would she have gained access to these files? We have access to his devices, and we’ve never found anything like this on him,” Eva counters.
She’s right. I might be forcing pieces together, but Pippa wasn’t managing gala details at The Vault last night—she was working McCarter. I know I’m right about that. I just don’t know how to prove it or what it means.
“E, can we pull footage from the bar? I want to see where Pippa went after her meeting with McCarter.”
Hudson clears his throat. “She went to Club14. We were together last night. All night.”
Well, fuck me.
I try not to show my growing frustration, but I can’t imagine I’m doing a great job at it.
“Alright, well. I still want to follow my gut on this. Something is off here. E, let’s set up surveillance on Pippa for a few days, see what we find.
I know you’ve already been looking into TruthDrop, but look for ties between Pippa and this leak on McCarter.
Let’s look back into Bellamy and Trask, too.
See if she’s connected to either of them or any of the other politicians or celebrities who have been exposed by this group. ”
“I’m pissed we’ve missed this again,” Eva says.
“These men have been clients since Dad’s time, but we always dig into the skeletons in their closets.
I have access to their home security systems, for crying out loud.
I added extra backend trackers after Bellamy and I’m still not finding this info. How is this group doing it?”
“I don’t know,” I admit. “I’m sure I’ll hear from McCarter now that shit is hitting the fan. I’ll make sure he knows he’s off our roster.”
“Bellamy and Trask died pretty quickly after their scandals, right?” Hudson chimes in, as if trying to work out his own clues.
“Yeah. Bellamy had an aneurysm; Trask a heart attack,” I answer.
“E, who else had file drops linked to TruthDrop?” Hudson asks. “That tech CEO Silas Truve and the Hollywood producer Wes Thornwell—"
“Yeah, and Dex Hannigan,” Eva finishes for him. “That bummed me out. I grew up watching his show—he was so funny,” she adds.
“Right. So, is it just my imagination, or are all of those guys dead now?” I ask
Eva, he and I look at each other. I’m trying to track what I know of TruthDrop, of the media scandals of the last few years, and of the men who have been exposed. Are any still alive?
“Damn, yeah. Truve had a stroke, Thornwell had a blood clot, and Hannigan died of kidney failure. What the fuck?” Eva says, eyes on her screen.
“They were all older,” Hudson says. “Those are all natural causes of death for men their age. They were under a lot of damned stress and pressure after these media leaks.”
“They all died within a month of their media leaks. It could all be a coincidence—”
“I don’t believe in coincidences,” I say matter-of-factly.
“Agreed,” Hudson says.
“So, what are we saying? That we think the vigilante group behind TruthDrop is not only exposing predators, but killing them? And we think your siren, Pippa Saint James aka ‘Jane,’ could be a part of it?” Eva asks.
We all sit in that statement for a moment.
“Feels like a leap,” Hudson says.
“Yeah, we need to start digging into this,” I say. “If McCarter dies unexpectedly, then we’ve got a bigger problem than a staffer who seems out of place or an anonymous group of hackers exposing pedophiles. We’re talking widespread assassinations that no one seems to know about.”