Page 6 of Fang (Underground Vengeance MC, NOLA Chapter #3)

My office deep inside the clubhouse welcomes me with the familiar electronic hum that’s more soothing to my ears than any lullaby.

The blue glow from six monitors bathes everything in a spectral light, turning my skin the color of a drowned man’s and making the stacks of circuit boards and hard drives along the walls glisten like wet stones.

This is my sanctuary, my domain of absolute control—unlike the chaos I’ve created by bringing Mina onto our property.

I sink into my chair, the worn leather conforming to my body with the memory of countless all-night coding sessions. The conversation with Vapor sits heavy in my chest, a weight pulling down my shoulders as I reach into my pocket and extract the flash drive.

It’s unremarkable to look at—black plastic with a manufacturer’s logo worn nearly smooth from being handled countless times. Nothing about its appearance suggests it could be worth dying for, yet Mina had clutched it like a lifeline even as the warehouse burned around us.

I plug it into my primary workstation, the one with custom hardware I’ve pieced together from components no legitimate retailer would sell to a civilian. The machine hums a bit louder, acknowledging the new connection, and my fingers dance across the keyboard.

“Alright,” I mutter to the empty room, “let’s see if I can figure out if you ’ re hiding anything. I ’ ve already checked, but one more shot…”

The same twelve files appear on my screen, organized in a folder structure so basic it’s almost insulting.

Spreadsheets containing what appear to be shipping manifests.

A few PDF documents with supplier information.

Nothing that seems worth the elaborate security theater Mina orchestrated at the auction.

I run a deeper scan, pushing past the obvious file structure into the raw data. My eyes track the scrolling hexadecimal output, looking for patterns or anomalies that might indicate steganographic concealment—data hidden within other data, invisible to standard file systems.

Nothing.

I try a different approach, opening a terminal window and typing a series of commands to check for alternative data streams, hidden partitions, or encrypted volumes that might be nested within the visible filesystem.

Still nothing.

“Come on,” I growl, frustration building behind my eyes like storm pressure. “There has to be something here.”

I launch a suite of specialized forensic tools I’ve modified myself to detect the kinds of tricks only the most paranoid hackers would use. The programs chew through the flash drive’s contents, analyzing every byte, comparing hash values, checking timestamps for inconsistencies.

The results roll in, one after another, each delivering the same maddening conclusion: the drive contains exactly what it appears to contain. Twelve unremarkable files with no hidden data.

I lean back in my chair, running both hands through my hair until it stands up in chaotic spikes. This doesn’t make sense. Why would Mina risk her life for this? Why would she claim it contained everything we need if it’s just basic supply-chain documentation?

Unless… unless she lied. Unless this whole thing is exactly what Vapor fears—a trap designed to get her inside our defenses.

The thought sends a chill through me despite the warmth of the electronics-packed room. I’ve been so focused on the technical puzzle that I may have missed the human one.

I’m about to eject the drive and storm back to the Quiet Room to confront Mina when a notification pops up in the corner of my main monitor. A small red box with white text, innocuous enough that most people would dismiss it without a second thought.

But I’m not most people, and the message it contains makes my blood freeze in my veins.

INTRUSION DETECTED - LEVEL 3 FIREWALL brEACH

“What the hell?” I lean forward, fingers already flying across the keyboard to pull up the security dashboard.

Level 3 is our outermost defensive perimeter, designed to keep casual snoopers and script kiddies at bay.

Nothing that should cause serious concern—except another notification follows immediately, then another.

LEVEL 2 FIREWALL brEACH

ATTEMPTING TO ISOLATE INTRUSION VECTOR

My posture changes instantly, muscles tensing as I pull myself closer to the desk. This isn’t a random attack or automated scan. This is something targeted and sophisticated, moving through our defenses with disturbing speed.

I pull up the traffic analyzer, watching in real-time as packets flood our network from multiple IP addresses.

The pattern is too coordinated to be random, too elegant to be brute force.

Someone is probing for weaknesses with the precision of a surgeon, testing each potential entry point with carefully crafted packets designed to exploit vulnerabilities that shouldn’t even exist in my system.

“Oh, you want to play?” I mutter, fingers flying across the keyboard as I initiate countermeasures. “Let’s play.”

I route the incoming traffic through a honeypot—a decoy system designed to look vulnerable while actually isolating the attacker from our real network. For a moment, the flood of intrusion attempts redirects, and I allow myself a small smile of satisfaction.

It lasts exactly three seconds before new warnings explode across my screens.

LEVEL 1 FIREWALL brEACH

ADMINISTRATIVE ACCESS COMPROMISED

DATABASE INTEGRITY FAILURE

“No, no, no!” The words escape through clenched teeth as I watch the attacker slice through my defenses like they don’t exist. This shouldn’t be possible. I built these systems myself, hardened them against exactly this kind of attack.

Red warning messages cascade across all six monitors now, a digital waterfall of failure that makes my stomach clench with a nauseating mix of fear and professional outrage.

The club’s secure databases—containing everything from member information to operational details to financial records—are being systematically accessed and copied.

My fingers blur across the keyboard, trying to isolate critical systems, change access credentials, anything to slow the bleeding of data. But the attacker is always one step ahead, anticipating my defensive moves with uncanny precision.

It’s like they know the system. Like they know me.

A new message appears, centered on my main screen in blinking red letters that seem to pulse in time with my racing heartbeat:

FULL SYSTEM COMPROMISE IMMINENT - 30 SECONDS TO COMPLETE DATA EXFILTRATION

There’s only one option left, and it’s the digital equivalent of a scorched earth policy. I reach beneath my desk for a red button protected by a clear plastic cover—my emergency kill switch, designed for exactly this kind of worst-case scenario.

I flip the cover open and slam my palm down on the button without hesitation.

The effect is immediate and dramatic. One by one, the servers along the walls power down, their status lights blinking from green to amber to nothing at all.

The cooling fans that have been whirring at different pitches slow and stop, like mechanical hearts giving up the ghost. The monitors flicker and go dark, taking the warning messages with them.

The room falls into an eerie silence broken only by my ragged breathing and the soft ping of cooling metal as the servers contract in the suddenly still air.

In that ensuing silence, one thought pulses through my mind with absolute clarity: Mina knows more than she’s telling me, and I’m going to find out what it is, one way or another.

I storm back to the Quiet Room with my Glock drawn and fury burning through my veins like liquid code—hot, precise, and dangerous.

The attack on our systems wasn’t random.

It was too coordinated, too perfectly timed.

The coincidence stretches beyond statistical probability, and there’s only one variable in this equation that makes sense.

The hacker sitting in our concrete box who claimed to have the keys to the cartel’s digital kingdom.

The locks yield to my fingers with mechanical obedience, each click echoing my mounting anger. I throw the door open, letting light blaze into the darkness. The sudden brightness illuminates her stunned expression, but I don ’ t so much as blink. I don’t want to miss a microsecond of her reaction.

Mina sits exactly where I left her, back against the far wall, knees drawn up to her chest. The harsh light catches the hollows beneath her cheekbones, the cracked surface of her lips.

The glass of water I left is empty, but it wasn ’ t enough.

Twenty-four hours without water has left visible marks, yet her eyes remain as sharp as shattered glass, reflecting a defiance that even dehydration can’t dull.

“Our network just got hit,” I say, the words clipped and cold as I level the gun at her chest. “Sophisticated attack. Bypassed security protocols that were specifically designed to be impenetrable.”

I watch her face for the telltale signs of guilt or satisfaction—a twitch at the corner of the mouth, a flicker of the eyelids, any of the hundred microexpressions that humans can’t control. Most people don’t realize how much their faces reveal in the milliseconds before conscious control kicks in.

Mina isn’t most people.

Her expression shifts in a way I can’t quite catalog—not guilt, not exactly satisfaction, but something more complex.

Recognition, perhaps. Or the confirmation of a theory.

It’s gone before I can properly analyze it, replaced by the same cool assessment she’s worn since I pulled her from the burning warehouse.

“Convenient timing,” I continue, taking a step closer, the Glock steady in my hand. “Almost like someone knew exactly when to strike. Almost like someone had inside information.”