Page 117 of Filthy Little Fix

"Alright," I say. "About the plan against Alexei... the bait is ready. Sal has given me everything I need. When do we launch?"

Dmitry takes a moment to reply. Maybe he expected more questions, more drama.

"Svetlana is finalizing the leak package. The evidence is perfect. Sal really outdid himself under your... tutelage," he says, with a hint of irony. "We launch tomorrow at noon. By then, the stock markets will be closed for the weekend. It will minimize collateral damage to our holdings."

"Efficient."

"We try to be." I hear the smile in his voice. "Rest, Nyx. Tomorrow, you'll need a clear head to monitor the chaos we're going to create. And for me to convince you to accept our base salary as operations leaders."

Obscene salary. I roll my eyes.

"Fuck you, Dmitry."

He laughs. If it were Svetlana, she'd come here and shoot me in the head.

Then, a hiss and he hangs up.

Silence is back.

Rest, Nyx. As if that were possible.

I slide my chair to my old laptop. The scratched plastic casing, the sticker of an indie band I don't even listen to anymore. A fossil.

I connect it to the network. The Volkov triple firewall greets me. But I'm the new head of security, and every good architect knows the service passages. I create a temporary, untraceable tunnel.

With the information I extracted from Sal, Alexei's secret financial network is no longer so secret. Dozens of accounts,contingency funds, crypto wallets... a labyrinth designed to hide money.

It's automatic, like breathing. Money starts to flow. Thirty transactions.

Seven thousand eight hundred dollars from here, from a "travel expenses" account in the Cayman Islands. Twelve thousand three hundred from another, disguised as a "consulting fee" in Luxembourg. Five thousand two hundred from a Bitcoin wallet. Four thousand from another. Broken numbers, disguised as operational expenses, bank fees, rounding errors. Noise. It would take weeks, months, for a very good forensic accountant to piece together all these small bleedings and realize they'd been stolen. And by then... it will be too late.

I aggregate everything into a single anonymous wallet. The total comes to just over two hundred thousand. The money passes through three cryptocurrency tumblers, is converted, divided, recombined, and bounces off servers in five countries in less than ten seconds. Clean. Anonymous. Undetectable.

Now, my old company's HR system is still online, in the middle of the data migration I was supposed to oversee. It takes twelve seconds. A quick query to the payroll database, using the administrator credentials Chad wrote on a post-it note under his keyboard.

I have everything. Full name, address, account number, branch.

I fill in Nicole's account details.

Transfer description box. I stare at it. She would think it was money from heaven. A divine miracle.

I hesitate. Why am I even doing this?

I click the description box.

I type the only thing that makes sense.

Thanks for taking care of the fern.

I press Enter.

Transfer completed.

I erase my tracks. The tunnel I created closes. The logs are clean.

I close the lid of my old laptop.

Leo Hays paid his last debt.