Chapter 3
Rafa
Her face fills my screen—eyes sharp as blades, mouth set in a line that refuses to give anything away. Kira Petrov. Twenty-seven years old. Fluent in six languages. Graduate of Harvard University with a double degree in applied mathematics and computer science.
This is the woman I'm supposed to marry. I can’t deny she is stunning.
I dig deeper, sifting through layers of digital breadcrumbs. Publicly, she's the Director of International Relations for the Petrov Group—a legitimate conglomerate that serves as the pristine mask covering the Bratva's bloodstained operations.
"Stalking your future wife? That's definitely not creepy at all."
I don't turn around. I recognize the voice—smooth as expensive whiskey, with an undercurrent of perpetual amusement. Luca Greco materializes beside me, propping himself against my desk with the casual grace of someone who's never been unwelcome anywhere in his life.
"It's called intelligence gathering," I mutter, minimizing one of the windows as Luca leans closer.
"Intelligence gathering," he repeats with a smirk. "Is that what we're calling spank bank material these days?"
I shove him away. "How did you get in here?"
"Your security is shit." He grins, running a hand through his perfectly tousled hair. "Also, I have a key."
I curse under my breath. I should never have given him emergency access to my loft in Tribeca, but Luca has saved my life twice. Old debts die hard.
"Seriously, though," he continues, peering at the photos I've compiled, "not bad, Rosso. Not bad at all. The Bratva princess is hot. And terrifying. But mostly hot."
Luca's my oldest friend and my most significant liability. Club owner. Arms dealer. Part-time art thief. Full-time pain in my ass. He exists in a perpetual state of expensive dishevelment, like someone who just rolled out of a model's bed and into a Tom Ford suit.
“There is something about her that I can’t place.” I say, bringing up a secure browser window.
“What is it?”
“She has to be a hacker. The Petrovs wouldn’t let an outsider handle their cyber empire.”
“I mean, it makes sense considering you handle it for Vito.”
“I need to know what her hacker name is.”
“It sounds like she is the Yin to your Yang.” He adds, laughing.
I scowl. "This isn't a joke, Luca."
"Everything's a joke, fratello. Some punchlines just take longer to land." He flops onto my leather couch, producing a flask from his inner pocket. "Besides, what's the problem? You get a hot genius wife, and Vito gets his precious alliance. Everybody wins."
"Except for my freedom."
Luca rolls his eyes. "Freedom is overrated. Trust me, I've slept with half of New York, and I'm still bored out of my mind."
"Your commitment issues aren't relevant to my forced marriage."
"Sure they are." He takes a long swig from his flask. "The grass is always greener, my friend. You want out, I want meaning, the world keeps spinning."
I turn back to my screens, pulling up another dossier. There are gaps in Kira's timeline—periods where she disappears from public record completely. "She vanished for nearly eight months last year. No digital trail at all."
"Probably on a super-secret Bratva mission. Or rehab. Rich girls love rehab."
"She doesn't strike me as the rehab type."
"You’re right," Luca agrees, his voice suddenly serious. "She strikes me as the 'bury-a-body-and-never-think-about-it-again' type."
I can't disagree. Something about Kira Petrov's eyes in these photographs—cold, calculating, constantly evaluating—sends a chill down my spine that isn't entirely unpleasant.
"I need a way out of this," I say, more to myself than to Luca.
"Or," Luca counters, "you need to embrace it. You're being handed a powerful alliance on a silver platter. Use it."
I shake my head. "I've spent three years building my exit strategy. I'm not tossing it away for a political marriage to a woman who might kill me in my sleep."
"Kinky."
"Luca—"
"Look," he cuts me off, sitting up straight for once. "You want out? Fine. But maybe consider that having the Bratva princess on your side could make leaving a lot easier. Think tactically, like Vito taught you. I mean, do you really want to take unnecessary risks?"
I pause, considering his words. It's not terrible logic, which is rare from Luca after midnight.
"She'd never betray her family. I doubt she would go out of her way to help me." I say.
Luca shrugs. "Everyone has a price. Figure out hers."
My phone buzzes—a notification from one of my security systems monitoring the shared Bratva-Rosso financial network. Something's triggered an alert.
"Trouble in paradise?" Luca asks, noting my expression.
"Maybe." I pull up the alert on my main screen. "Someone's poking around the joint accounts."
"Russians or feds?"
"Neither. This is... something else."
Luca peers over my shoulder, though the complex arrays of code mean nothing to him. "Looks like gibberish to me."
"It's a probe. Sophisticated." I frown as I trace the digital fingerprints. "Almost like..."
"Like what?"
"Like someone's searching for something specific." I start typing rapidly, tracking the intrusion through layers of security.
"Well," Luca yawns dramatically, "while you play with your ones and zeros, I'm going to crash on your absurdly expensive couch. Some of us have a shipment of questionably acquired Renaissance paintings arriving at the docks at 7 a.m."
I barely acknowledge him as he stretches out on the couch, draping his arm over his eyes. Within minutes, his breathing deepens, and he's asleep—Luca's supernatural ability is to pass out anywhere, anytime, regardless of danger or circumstance.
Once I'm sure he's unconscious, I bring up my most secure terminal and activate a series of proxies. The probe I detected isn't random. It's methodical, precise—and it's examining transaction records from exactly eleven months ago, right when I began setting up my escape fund.
Cold sweat breaks out along my spine. Someone knows. I dive deeper into the logs, tracing the intrusion back through dummy servers and false endpoints. What I find stops my breath entirely.
The intruder is using a variant of my own encryption algorithm—the one I designed. The one only I should know.
# AES-256 Encryption using BitVenom's custom key (CBC mode)
def aes_encrypt(data, bitvenom_key) :
# AES CBC mode requires an Initialization Vector (IV) for added security
cipher = AES. new(bitvenom_key. encode( 'utf-8'), AES. MODE_CBC)
ciphertext = cipher.encrypt(pad (data.encode('utf-8'), AES.block_size))
# Return the IV + encrypted data
return cipher.iv + ciphertex
Someone isn't just following my digital trail—they're using my own footprints to frame me for missing funds.
My eyes flick to the timetable of the missing funds. The first transaction disappeared exactly one week after I began quietly siphoning money into my exit accounts. But these withdrawals are massive—millions at a time—and they're being routed to destinations I don't recognize.
If Vito or the Petrovs trace this back to my encryption signature...
It would appear that I've been stealing from both families, which I've not. All my funds have been my money, not the Rosso’s, let alone the Russians’. But if they think otherwise… A capital offense. The kind that ends with my body being found in pieces across five boroughs.
"Shit." The word escapes my lips as my fingers fly across the keyboard.
I have minutes, maybe seconds, before someone else notices the breach. I deploy countermeasures, erasing log files, planting false timestamps, and obscuring the encryption markers that would tie this back to me.
As I work, a horrible realization dawns: this isn't random. This is targeted. Someone is deliberately using methods that implicate me.
The question is who.
My mind immediately goes to Kira. It’s clear she has the skills if she is my counterpart with the Bratva . But why frame me now, right before our families unite us in marriage?
Unless...
Unless she's looking for a way out, too.
I glance at the sleeping form of Luca on my couch, then back to the screen where Kira's photograph still lurks in a minimized window. Those calculating eyes. That mind is like a steel trap.
Is she my enemy or potentially my greatest ally?
I finish covering my tracks and then do something reckless—I leave a single, encrypted message buried deep in the code where only someone of Kira's caliber would find it:
# BitVenom's encrypted message, hidden within the system
def bitvenom_encryption(rsa_public_key):
# BitVenom's cryptic message
message = "I'm not your thief. But I might be your way out."
bitvenom_salt = "BitVenom_Salt" # Known only to BitVenom
timestamp = 1642095600
# Speczic moment when the message was created
It's dangerous. Possibly the stupidest thing I've ever done. But as I stare at the dossier of my future wife—the woman who might destroy me or save me—I realize that my carefully constructed escape plan has already changed beyond recognition.
The variables are shifting. The algorithm needs rewriting.
And Kira Petrov has just become the most dangerous and intriguing factor in my equation.