Chapter 1 Royal #2
The problem is the look in Leticia’s eyes in that photo. It’s in the words of those text messages. It’s because I can’t do anything about it. Maybe in the future, but not just yet. For now . . .
Be the hunter, my wolf says the same time I plop my ass in my computer chair.
The leather is cool against my bare back, sending a shiver up my spine and adding to the thrill of the chase. Find her.
Images of dark alleyways, stalking a blonde-haired woman, come into my mind, and I’m quick to push them away. I refuse to stalk someone that way.
It’s a lot of proprietary software.
It’s a lot of keystrokes.
It’s more than a lot of luck.
The tracking shows that the D’Medicis took Antonella’s phone back with them into their house. I assumed they would since the information we gleaned showed that Antonella moved in with her uncle, Gregorio, the head of the D’Medici Mafia, when she returned from New York.
The D’Medicis didn’t turn Antonella’s phone off when they took it back to their penthouse. So through the clone, I have access to everything.
I take it back. The D’Medicis are bad at crime.
Immediately I gain access to their home network.
There isn’t even a firewall protecting shit. Their internet password is their last name with the year Berto was born.
Their home security system is . . .
I scrub my hand down my face and squint at the screen to be sure I’m reading this right. Shit. Maybe we’re bad at crime.
All this fuckin’ time, one of our conglomerate’s baby corporations has been doing the security of the D’Medici penthouse?
Then again, who would approve the hours for me to go through every single client record of every single baby corporation we own?
An audit that size would mean way too much manpower to convert all the systems to talk to each other.
Plus, the contract process to look over and make sure we even had the legal authority to do so.
Not that what I’m doing is legal. But I’m a criminal, so it’s fine.
I open camera after camera. My wolf and I scour every feed and every room.
We’re checking all the angles of each room.
It’s not enough. But I can’t admit that I’m doing anything more than snooping.
I can’t admit that it feels as good as a hunt does.
It’s the same though. My heart is beating hard, and my wolf is right there on the surface with me. Ready to go.
Where is she? My wolf growls as I flick through the screens again. His curiosity has intensified with narrowed eyes.
I don’t see her. Sitting here and watching the feeds won’t change that.
My brain is moving a hundred miles an hour.
I go to county records and grab floor plans for the building. Then I start mapping out the cameras and the viewpoints, trying to find dead zones. I flick into the feeds on the second floor. None of them are labeled like the downstairs ones were. But there are a lot of cameras.
Big trouble. My wolf says it first.
I open the city planning map for the second floor, and it looks like all bedroom suites.
“Maybe they’re door cams.” I cringe as I click onto the first feed.
A bedroom suite comes into view. It’s appointed with fancy, expensive furniture and is blessedly empty.
“It’s not creepy to have live streams in bedrooms, not at all.” My sarcasm doesn’t make the creepy crawlies across my skin any better. Seeing how high tech and advanced these ones are with their night vision only makes it worse.
But I have absolutely one objective in mind.
First, I remotely disable the sound in every bedroom camera before I click into them one by one. The first three are empty rooms.
My hackles rise as I click into the next room. Berto is sleeping, ass up and naked in his bed. I close out of that as fast as I can and move to the next one.
Leticia is curled up under the covers on her bed. Her blonde hair spills across one pillow, and she clings to another like it’s anchoring her through a storm.
She’s perfect. My wolf perks up, his attention zeroed in on the image. My skin prickles like he wants to get a closer look in the flesh. Gorgeous little angel.
We’re violating her privacy. I scold him — and myself — but my hand falls off the mouse when I go to close out of the feed.
Her phone lights up on the nightstand next to her, the screen illuminating the room. I instinctively look at mine. Four thirty. It’s late, or early, depending on how you look at it.
Leticia stretches for a minute before, in a practiced maneuver, sliding off what must be the alarm.
Where are you going, gorgeous? My wolf cocks his head.
My finger twitches like it’s trying to zoom in.
“I really should close this feed out and then destroy the camera.” But I can’t help myself, watching as Leticia goes to her closet, then the dresser, then to the adjoining bath.
Does she know about the camera?
I know for a fact this is a discreet model and it’s free of any indicator lights, so there’s a chance she knows it’s there, but she’d have no idea if anyone was actively monitoring it.
Leticia emerges from the bathroom a few minutes later. She’s wearing a long skirt and a fluffy blouse. She grabs her phone off the nightstand and then takes an apron off the back of her door and pulls it over her shoulders before tying it up in the back.
There’s only one camera in the hallway, and it’s not of the same quality as the ones in the bedrooms, but I follow Leticia’s shape as she migrates to the staircase. Then, clicking camera by camera, I track her through the massive penthouse until she gets to the kitchen.
She’s graceful as she maneuvers around in the low light.
We work together — her in the kitchen and me re-coding the camera in her room.
I could disable it entirely, make it so that it overheats and burns itself out. No one would be able to watch her room then. But I can’t bring myself to do that.
What if they buy a new one?
My wolf reminds me that I can make the camera appear offline rather than removing it from the menu. I put the setting back on, then throw on a heavy-duty password encryption to that video feed and test that it works.
Leticia and I yawn and stretch at the same time. She has loaves of bread in the oven, and I have the peace of knowing that no one will be watching her bedroom.
I hate that I can’t make her safe. But I can watch her.
Two more keystrokes and I lock down their system.
The D’Medicis will have to do a password reset to get it all back online, and given that I changed the protocols and made the system more complex out of habit . . . It’ll be a long time before they sort out that Leticia’s camera is automatically and permanently locked.
They’ll never be able to detect that I’m here and watching them all. They’ll never know I’m watching her.
My wolf wags his tail in small, brisk whips back and forth. Sleep finally calls us toward bed.