Page 105 of Hacking His Code

As much as I loathe the idea of going to my father for help, I see no other way around it.

“Fine. Let’s get this over with.”

Hunter

“How could you let it get this far?” my father shouts, reading through the emails from my supposed aunt. “You should have come to me immediately! What in the world did you hope to achieve?”

Sitting on the opposite side of my father’s desk with Remi and Gabriel, I’m too angry to feel apologetic. If anything, my father owns a share of the blame. It may be my fault that Ari is involved in this mess, but it would have never gotten this far without his secrecy.

“That poor girl,” Father mutters, shaking his head in anger. “Fuck!”

“Whatever secrets you have are coming out now!” I warn.

“Who are you to tell me—”

“Who am I? You know everything about me, but I know very little about you. What is ScryptX, and those other programs I’ve seen remnants of? Why weren’t they on the books? What were they for? Why is it that almost every piece of information on them has been redacted or deleted?”

“We are not talking about this with Gabriel Fucking Icor here!” Father shouts.

“You will tell me, and you will tell me right this fucking second! The woman I love—who is carrying my child—has been kidnapped by someone claiming to be my aunt. And you better believe I will do anything to get Ari back.”

My father leans back in his chair, stunned. “Holy shit. She’s pregnant?”

Gabriel leans forward to address my father. “Mr. Davies, we don’t need your company secrets. Right now, we’re in two completely different areas of technology, and I see no reason to make enemies. Ari’s kidnapping isn’t just a concern of yours. She’s been working for me for the last several weeks, and I’m afraid of what she might say under duress. This might be hard to believe, but I am on your side.”

Father slams his fist down onto his desk. “Fuck—my own fucking son, right under my nose!”

My father has always been a mild-mannered man, a level-headed guy to a fault. I’ve never seen him this furious.

But I’m angry too.

“What the hell is that program you were working on?” I demand. “And why does Ari’s captor care so much about it?”

“I can’t tell you,” Father insists through gritted teeth.

“You have to!”

“It’s top-secret, classified at a level so high, that if the information fell into anyone’s hands…well, let’s just say I’d fear for their lives.”

I blink back at my father, confused. “But all our government contracts are—”

“Not all on the books, as you saw,” he says grimly. “Son, back in the day, there was a whole department we called: Black Tech.”

“Was?”

“It was stuff we couldn’t do in the light of day. Stuff people didn’t want others knowing about. After what happened with your aunt, we finished up what we had on our plate and pulled out of that line of work.”

“Jesus Christ.”

“We can discuss it later,” he says. “When we’re alone.”

“No—we’re going to discuss it now. Even with Gabriel Icor in the room.”

“I always knew this would come back to haunt me. I can’t tell you how many nights I laid in bed, awake, worried that everything was going to fall apart. I had just started to let down my guard. I thought, after all this time, surely we’d be in the clear. Some things just don’t stay buried.”

“Do you know who took Ari?” I ask.

“No.”