21. The Server Heist
The Server Heist
The bank was a fortress dressed in marble and brass.
Mercy National occupied the ground floor of a century-old building in Boston's financial district, its facade all Greek columns and gilded accents, its security state-of-the-art beneath the neoclassical veneer.
I'd spent three days casing it—noting the guard rotations, mapping the camera blind spots, memorizing the rhythms of the employees who streamed through its revolving doors each morning like blood cells through an artery.
Tonight, the artery was empty. Tonight, I was the surgeon.
I approached from the west, dressed in black tactical gear that had become a second skin over months of hunting.
The mask over my face was more than disguise; it was armor, a second self, the face of the woman I became when I stopped performing for either brother and started acting for myself.
Gabriel's intelligence had provided the vault specifications, the biometric vulnerabilities, the precise location of the server I needed to access.
Everything else—the execution, the timing, the cold precision of the break-in—was mine.
The first guard went down at 2:17 AM, a needle sliding into his carotid before he could register my presence.
I caught his body as it crumpled, lowering him silently to the marble floor, and moved on.
The second guard was at the security desk, eyes on a bank of monitors that showed nothing but empty hallways and quiet corridors—the loop I'd installed earlier that evening, a gift from Gabriel's considerable technical arsenal.
He didn't even look up before the needle found his throat.
The vault was in the sub-basement, accessible only through an elevator that required both a keycard and a biometric scan.
I had the keycard—lifted from Nathan's wallet while he slept, copied and returned before he noticed it was missing.
The biometric scan was more complicated.
Gabriel had provided a synthetic fingerprint overlay, crafted from a high-resolution image of Nathan's thumb that I'd taken while he was unconscious from the sedative.
It wouldn't pass a military-grade scanner, but the bank's system was commercial—robust enough to satisfy insurance requirements, vulnerable enough for someone with the right tools.
The scanner beeped green. The elevator doors slid open.
The sub-basement was cold, the air heavy with the hum of servers and the faint ozone smell of electronics.
The vault itself was a steel door three feet thick, guarded by a retinal scanner that would require Nathan's actual eye to open.
But I wasn't going through the vault door. I was going around it.
Gabriel's blueprints had revealed a maintenance access panel in the ceiling of the adjacent room—a flaw in the bank's design, a gap between the vault's walls and the building's original structure. It was barely large enough for a human body to squeeze through. It was exactly large enough for mine.
I pulled myself into the crawlspace and began the slow, agonizing journey through the dark.
The server was a sleek black monolith in the center of the vault, its lights blinking steady green in the darkness.
I'd expected more security—laser grids, pressure plates, the kind of theatrical defenses that had become standard in Nathan's world.
But the vault itself was the security. No one was supposed to get this far.
I plugged the portable drive into the server's access port and began the download.
Gabriel's decryption software hummed to life, bypassing firewalls and cracking passwords with the efficiency of a tool designed by the man who'd built the original system.
Nathan had taught his brother well, back before they'd become enemies.
He'd probably never imagined those lessons would be turned against him.
The download took fourteen minutes. I spent them cataloguing what I'd done. Three guards neutralized. Four cameras looped. One server accessed. In and out in under an hour, if everything went according to plan.
But nothing ever went according to plan.
The alarm triggered as I was exiting the crawlspace—not the bank's main system, but a secondary protocol Gabriel's intel hadn't identified. A silent alarm, the kind that summoned private security rather than police. I had maybe three minutes before they arrived.
I ran.
The elevator was too slow. I took the stairs, my boots pounding against concrete, my breath ragged in my throat.
The private security team was coming from the east entrance—I could hear their footsteps echoing through the marble halls.
I calculated angles, trajectories, exit routes.
The west service door was still clear. If I could reach it before they rounded the corner—
A bullet cracked the air above my head.
I dove behind a marble pillar, my heart hammering against my ribs. The security team was better armed than I'd anticipated. Military-grade weapons, tactical training. Nathan's people, probably—a secondary layer of protection he hadn't told me about, another secret in a relationship built on them.
"Drop your weapon and come out with your hands up!" The voice was male, authoritative, the kind that expected to be obeyed.
I didn't obey. I fired twice, heard a grunt of pain, and used the chaos to sprint for the service door. Another bullet grazed my arm—a hot line of fire that made me gasp—but I was through the door and into the alley before they could get a clear shot.
The night swallowed me whole. I ran until my lungs burned and my legs gave out, and then I ran some more. By the time I reached the safe house where Gabriel was waiting, blood was soaking through my tactical gear and the portable drive was still clutched in my hand like a heartbeat.
"It's done," I said, pressing the drive into his palm. "The server data. Everything he's been hiding."
"You're bleeding." His hands were already on me, checking the wound with clinical precision. "How bad?"
"Grazed. I'll survive." I pulled away from his touch, suddenly unable to bear it. "I need to get back to the apartment before he wakes up. He can't know I was gone."
"Bunny—"
"Don't." The word came out harsher than I intended. "Don't try to take care of me. Not tonight."
Something flickered in his expression but he stepped back, letting me go. "The wound needs to be cleaned. At least let me—"
"I'll clean it myself." I was already moving toward the door. "Decrypt the files. Find me everything we need to destroy him. I'll contact you tomorrow."
And then I was gone, back into the night, my arm throbbing with pain and my heart a cold, steady drum in my chest.
Nathan was still asleep when I stumbled through the apartment door.
The sedative had done its work—he was sprawled across the bed, breathing deep and even, completely oblivious to the blood drying on my sleeve and the stolen data now in Gabriel's possession. I slipped into the bathroom and locked the door, then assessed the damage in the mirror.
The bullet had grazed my upper arm—a shallow wound, but messy.
Blood had soaked through my tactical gear and was starting to drip onto the tile floor.
I stripped off the ruined clothes and stuffed them into a garbage bag I'd dispose of later, then set about cleaning the wound with hands that barely trembled.
The pain was grounding. The pain was real. The pain reminded me that I existed, that I was more than a collection of performances and lies.
When the wound was bandaged and the evidence was hidden, I crawled into bed beside Nathan and let exhaustion pull me under. Tomorrow, I'd come up with an explanation for the bandage. Tomorrow, I'd figure out how to use the server data to destroy him. Tomorrow, the hunt would continue.
But tonight, I just slept.
I woke to Nathan's hand on my shoulder and the sharp intake of his breath.
"Bunny. Bunny, wake up. What happened to your arm?"
The question cut through the fog of sleep, and I blinked up at him, my mind racing to construct a plausible lie. "I—what?"
"Your arm. It's bandaged. There's blood on the sheets." His voice was tight with concern—genuine concern, or at least a convincing performance of it. "What happened?"
The lie came together in fragments, assembled from the truth of my exhaustion and the skills I'd learned from both brothers.
"I went out last night. After you fell asleep.
I needed air, and I thought—I thought I'd be safe.
But someone—" I let my voice crack. "Someone attacked me.
In the alley behind the building. They had a knife.
I fought them off, but they cut my arm before I got away. "
The story was flimsy, full of holes, but Nathan's expression shifted from concern to fury with a speed that was almost convincing. "Someone attacked you? In our neighborhood?"
"I didn't get a good look at them. It was dark. They came out of nowhere." I let tears well in my eyes. "I was so scared, Nathan. I thought I was going to die."
He pulled me against his chest, his arms wrapping around me with a protectiveness that should have been comforting. But all I could think about was the server data in Gabriel's possession, the lies I was telling, the careful performance I was giving.
"I'm calling the police," he said. "This is—"
"No." I pulled back, shaking my head. "Please. I don't want to involve the police. They'll ask questions, and I don't—I can't—"
"Okay." He stroked my hair, his voice softening. "Okay. No police. But I'm not letting you out of my sight today. You need to rest. Let me take care of you."
The irony of his words hit like a physical blow. Let me take care of you. The same phrase he'd used when he was dosing me with chemicals and rewriting my memories. The same phrase he'd used when he was tightening the cage around me while telling me it was a sanctuary.
"Make love to me," I whispered. "Please. I need to feel something other than fear."
It was the same request I'd made a dozen times before—the same manipulation, wrapped in vulnerability. But this time, something was different. This time, the tears that spilled down my cheeks were real.
Because Nathan was gentle. Because Nathan was tender. Because Nathan held me like I was something precious, something fragile, something worth protecting. He kissed the bandage on my arm with a reverence that made my chest ache. He entered me with a slowness that felt almost like love.
And I cried. I cried for the man I'd thought he was. I cried for the life I'd thought we were building. I cried for Monika and all the other girls who'd been broken and discarded, and I cried for the version of myself that had believed in him so completely.
"Hey." He wiped the tears from my cheeks with gentle thumbs. "Hey, it's okay. You're safe now. I've got you."
You've got me, I thought. You've always had me. That's the problem.
But I didn't say that. I said, "I love you," and I let him hold me while I wept for everything I was about to destroy.
For every hope and dream I had been clinging to.
For every ounce of decency that he had ever offered me, no matter how fake it had been.
Because I did love him. Just like I loved Gabriel.
But sometimes when you love someone, you have to destroy them for the world to be free.
For you to be free. No matter how much it hurt to do so.