Page 23 of Filthy Little Fix

I purge him from myself. But the images remain.

NINE

LEO

My head throbs,but the pain… the pain is an old friend. The sting in my jaw—a broken tooth—, the burning in my stomach where Dante's punches had landed. All of it is music. The problem is the absence of sound now. His absence.

My erection still pulses. He didn't give me what I wanted. What I begged for. Not the end. Not the climax. He left me here, suspended, vibrating with an unsatisfied need. This refined cruelty… I love and hate it at the same time.

But, as much as I like this punishment,whydid he run?

I lift my head and take a deep breath. The air in this shitty house is the same as before. The same bland, dead air I've been trying to escape for years.

ThisI don't like. He could deny me orgasm as many times as he wanted, and I wouldbegagain every single time. But I don't like that he left me, nothere. Again.

I look at my erection, still hard, pulsing, waiting. It's living proof of his violence, of his presence in me.

My hand slides over my own cock, copying his rough movements. The thumb. The knuckles. The squeeze.

I close my eyes, reliving every detail. His scent. The fury in his eyes. The taste of my own blood on his tongue. Every time he denied me, every time he forced me to beg, I had to work hard to keep from coming. And now, I have to finish what he started.

I moan, low. It doesn't come even close to the sound he pulled out of me.

His touch is addictive. Violent, humiliating.

I bite my lip and let out another moan, louder, deeper.This is not enough.

Dante's fingers, his mouth. His body, pressed against mine. His anger, his power. The taste of his lust and hatred.

My cock pulses again. The memory of his body, the feel of him, is too intense.

I clench my fists.

It's not him.

It's not the same.

The Volkovs.Their systems. Their networks. Dante's life. It's all an open book to me now. He may have thought he erased my digital footprint, but I know how to make ghosts. And I know how to hunt them.

I type shortcodes into the terminal. I don't care about their money. I don't care about their secrets for profit. I care aboutDante.

I'm already in their peripheral systems. The smaller, neglected ones. The sound systems in their outposts. The internal printers. The tracking systems for their shipments. Now, I'll find their internal communication logs. Their meeting schedules. Dante's personal calendar.

What to do.

I need something that makes Dante crawl back to me. Tome, specifically, and not anybody else—not another hacker, not a woman, not a man, not another lover.

I need to find a critical breach.

I spend hours diving deeper into their network, mapping their weaknesses, cataloging their vulnerabilities. Not just the ones I found in their printed code, but the ones I'm finding now, the subtle backdoors and faulty protocols they missed.

I'd pinpoint a vulnerability in their Atlantic City casino payout system—something that would start costing themrealmoney—but I'm unsure if that's sufficient. My interruptions with their shipments most likely already did something to their bank accounts, but that feels little.Toolittle.

My phone rings. It's weird because no one ever calls me.

I take it, hidden in a drawer under the laptop's table, and check the name.

It's Chad.