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Her eyes narrow. "Fine."
I leave the room, locking it behind me—a precaution that feels increasingly unnecessary but one I maintain out of habit. In the supply closet I find a roll of black electrical tape and return to find Melania sitting cross-legged on the bed, her posture perfect despite her casual position.
I hand her the tape and she immediately tears off a small piece with her teeth. She doesn't need any help. I get it.
She turns the laptop toward me, pointing to the tiny camera lens at the top of the screen. "This needs to be covered completely. And here—" she points to a small pinhole on the side, "—is the microphone."
I watch as she carefully places tape over both spots, pressing down firmly to ensure no gaps.
"There's another microphone on the bottom," she says, flipping the laptop over and covering a third spot. "Now we should be safe from remote activation of recording devices."
She looks up at me, all business now. Her fingers hover over the keyboard. "I need the USB."
I reach into my pocket, thumb grazing the smooth surface of the drive. For something so small, it carries enough data to topple empires. I pull it out, holding it between my thumb and forefinger.
"Here," I say.
Melania's eyes lock onto the drive, her focus sharpening like a predator spotting prey. She extends her hand, palm up, fingers slightly curled—expectant but not demanding.
I don't immediately place it in her waiting palm. "Remember our arrangement. You work with me, not against me."
"I understand," she says, her voice level despite the hunger in her eyes.
I drop the drive and her fingers close around it protectively, like she's afraid I might change my mind.
I drag a chair from the corner of the room, positioning it at an angle where I can clearly see her screen. The legs scrape against the floor, the sound harsh in the quiet room. I sit down, leaning forward with my elbows on my knees, my posture deceptively casual.
"Don't try anything clever," I warn. "I may not be a tech genius but I know enough to spot if you're trying to send messages or access networks."
She doesn't respond, already lost in her own world. Her fingers move with practiced precision as she boots up the laptop. The screen light illuminates her face, casting shadows that hollow her cheeks and sharpen her features.
She plugs in the drive. Her entire demeanor changes—shoulders hunching forward slightly, head tilted at a determined angle, fingers poised over the keyboard like a pianist about to perform. The rest of the room might as well not exist.
I've seen this kind of focus before. In snipers. In surgeons. In people whose success depends on blocking out everything except the task at hand.
She types rapidly, navigating through security protocols with the ease of someone walking a familiar path. Her eyes never leave the screen, not even to blink. Her breathing has slowed, grown deeper, more controlled.
It's like watching someone slip into a trance. The woman who was arguing with me moments ago, the woman who criticized my cooking and maintained her defiance despite her circumstances—she's gone. In her place is this laser-focused technician, completely absorbed in the digital world before her.
The way she loses herself in the work reminds me of how I feel when planning an operation—that complete immersion where nothing exists except the objective. It's rare to see that level of concentration in someone else.
CHAPTER 8
My fingers hover over the keyboard, the familiar rush of adrenaline flooding my system as the laptop recognizes the USB drive. The first security gate appears on screen—a seemingly simple pin entry field, but I know better. Raymond's security system is military-grade, with multiple authentication layers.
"This will take a minute," I murmur, more to myself than to Alessio.
The first pin is a six-digit code that changes every twelve hours based on an algorithm. When I accessed it in Raymond's study I discovered the pattern—it's tied to stock market closing numbers from the previous day. Elegant but predictable if you know what you're looking for.
I pull up a simple command prompt and start typing code to bypass the pin generator. My surroundings fade away—the locked room, Alessio's watchful presence, even my own body becomes distant. There's only the code, the challenge, the digital puzzle waiting to be solved.
Lines of text scroll across the screen as my program runs, testing combinations based on yesterday's market closings. I feel my breathing slow, matching the rhythm of the blinking cursor. This is where I belong, where I make sense. Not in glittering ballrooms or at the head of a wedding aisle, but here—in the clean, logical world of code where problems have solutions if you're smart enough to find them.
The program stops, displaying a sequence: 835721.
"Got it," I whisper, entering the pin.
The screen flashes green then transitions to the next security layer. Relief washes through me—the first gate is open. But there are three more to go before we can access the files.