Page 55 of Kept in the Dark (Hitmen of Ulysses #2)

Dimitri

The nicest wedding present ever

What her life is worth.

I do not like the idea that she would think of her life this way—in terms of some arbitrary numerical value—but she deserves to know what is on the drive, after what she has gone through because of it.

Mid-planning session, Wesley’s scanning program reported something unusual in the drive, and he grew increasingly excited and agitated, clicking around and typing faster than James and I could follow. Knowing he was close, I left to retrieve Nicole.

As we enter, James stands and offers her his chair—and while there is a flash of irritation that he thinks to give my woman this comfort, no man who would call himself a gentleman should sit while a woman has no seat. Excluding Wesley, of course, who must sit while he does his important work.

“Ready? Among all the…” Wesley trails off, eyes darting to Nicole quickly, and clears his throat, “other nasty bits on the drive, we have…”

“My breath is fucking bated,” James drawls.

With a flourish, Wesley hits a few keys and angles his screen so we can all see.

“I’m seeing… that’s a lot of numbers,” James frowns. “Enough dramatics, Short Round. The hell am I lookin’ at?”

“Bitcoin wallets,” Wesley replies as if the answer were obvious.

“Okay…” James says, scratching at the stubble across his jaw .

There is some silence between us, and Wesley looks around, his excitement slowly dying at our blank expressions. “A series of public and private keys for transaction ledgers that are untraceable.”

“I have a confession,” Nicole says, glancing at me, then directing it at Wesley. “I don’t really know what Bitcoin is… I only know enough to sound good, so guys wouldn’t try to explain it to me on dates. You’re saying this is money, right?”

James looks at me, relief plain on his face.

Nicole saved him from having to ask. I have a rough understanding—enough to know that Wesley has found what basically amounts to an illegal gold mine.

Or a platinum mine. Perhaps a diamond mine.

Or all three combined, depending on how Volkevich managed his fortune.

“Lots of money. Things only have value—money, gold, whatever—because years ago we decided it did, right? Well, Bitcoin is like that. These codes are 2000-bit numbers that represent a blockchain, which is like a documented proof of historical ownership. Every transaction adds to the blockchain, changing it slightly. Having one of these private keys allows you to sign a transaction to add to the Bitcoin ledger, proving your ownership. Think of it like a code with a signature.”

As he speaks, he types one of the keys into a website that shows the value of the coin.

“Having the private key means you have proof that this public key is something you own. This is a public key from the flash drive,” he says, pointing to the numbers he has typed into a search engine within the site.

“So, my life is worth…” she leans forward, finding the figure on the screen, then blows out a breath. “Half a million dollars. Okay… that’s… something. It’s more than an insurance payout might be, I suppose.”

Wesley shakes his head. “No, Nicole. That’s just one of the wallets on here. There are thousands of them.”

She goes pale. “Th-thousands of… I’m sorry, you’re saying I had thousands of millions of dollars in my stomach?”

“Sometimes called billions ,” James observes with a laugh.

I cut him a sharp look. If he makes some kind of joke about how she defecated money, he will lose some of his teeth.

“It’s unlikely each micro-transaction is the same size, but I’d lowball the value of this drive in the hundreds of millions, all said,” Wesley continues.

She sucks in a noise of shock, and I watch her reaction curiously.

The going rate for a hit these days is close to eight million, depending on the target.

More, when the target is difficult—dangerous or high profile.

It does not seem like so much to me anymore, but I suppose it would be to most of the people in this country, who will never see one million, let alone 100.

“You think it was the nicest wedding present ever?” James asks me.

I shake my head. “No, it was thousands of payments made for years of dirty business dealings. I think it is Volkevich’s safest bank account—the one with no central governing entity.”

“Bitcoin has become the preferred method of payment of the underworld—better even than cash, in some situations, because it’s safer and as anonymous as you want it to be,” Wesley adds.

“ Da, and weddings are excellent places to strike up business deals—everyone is in a good mood and no one brings their gun—so I imagine that is why they had it.”

“A smart, careful man would only have one copy,” Wesley nods. “And we know Kyle wasn’t working with Viktor, so he must have stolen it from him that night.”

James laughs, rubbing his hands together.

“I love a heist! Okay, so Douchebag Kyle knows his uncle is going to do some business, so he gets in there and steals it. But if anyone finds it on him, he’s a dead man, so he plants it in Nicole before he leaves the scene of the crime, planning to circle back to her for it later.

Maybe he even starts the gunfight on his way out to cover his tracks. ”

I have to admit, that seems very likely. Particularly as it aligns with Nicole’s description of Kyle from that night—on edge, covered in blood, manic.

“But wasn’t that risky?” she asks. “I mean, I got away, and he lost the money.”

“Obviously, he didn’t consider that. But even if you’d found it, you never would have known what you had.

The wallets weren’t exactly easily accessible, hidden behind several layers of passwords and a two-step authentication that required Viktor’s personal cellphone,” Wesley explains.

“Kyle likely didn’t even realize that was the case, since he didn’t steal the phone. ”

Understanding lights her expression, and she exchanges a look with me. I wonder if she is aligning this story with the bandage on my hand and my strange state of mind last night. “Okay, sure. But even if it was inaccessible with passcodes and all that, why let it out of your sight? Why me?”

“They were checking the men,” I remember. “They were patting us down for weapons, checking our pockets. You were in the wedding party, very distantly related to the bride, above suspicion. And you were the only one without a date.”

She lifts a brow at me, and I respond with a smirk. She arrived without a man, but she did not leave alone.

She shakes her head. “Still. If I had my hands on that much money, I would never let it out of my sight.”

“She has a point,” I say.

“A damn fine point,” Wesley adds.

“That hundreds of millions of dollars isn’t just something you give to a stranger and hope you catch up to them later?

Of course I have a point… did that not occur to you guys?

” She stops herself, and her eyes flick around, as if she is seeing the grandeur of the house again for the first time. “How much money do you have ? ”

“Hundreds of millions more than we did yesterday,” James chuckles. “Well, you do.”

“Me?” she squeaks. “People want to kill me for that, and I don’t even really get how it works. I don’t want it!”

Her reaction is not a surprise; still, it is always nice to know that your woman values the right things—her life over money, for instance.

Her round, frightened eyes meet mine. “He’s not being serious, is he? We’re not keeping that money. That would be insane.”

I can feel my teammates’ eyes weighing heavily on me. “James and Wesley and I will discuss the best path forward. Our first priority is always to ensure the safety of everyone involved. When we form a plan, usually the right option or opportunity presents itself.”

“Even having it is making me nervous,” she says softly. “It’s like I’m doing something actively illegal, just knowing about it. I know Viktor is dead, but… Hundreds of millions of dollars went missing from a crime family. I can’t imagine they’re going to just let it go.”

“Probably not.”

I can see her mind spinning, and I take a half-step towards her, made uncomfortable by the look of such doubt and concern on her face.

“So how do we get out of this? Can we give the money back?”

Wesley takes this one, his voice gentle. “We could, though I doubt it’s the right call. Volkevich has been in business in this area for a few decades; in that time, they’ve bought and sold everything from automatic weapons to drugs to people.”

She pales.

“You said you got a job at St. Luke’s, right?

” James continues. “That’s Bratva territory.

On any night, you were probably treating overdoses, gunshot victims, trafficked women…

all part of Volkevich’s legacy. That money is how they stay in business.

Right now, they’re cut off, and they can’t make payments to their suppliers.

It’ll run them into the ground an d get ‘em all killed, eventually. But if you give them that USB back, they’ll pick right back up where they left off. ”

She winces and her shoulders round under the weight of the knowledge. “Okay, so we’re definitely not giving it back. But it’s evidence… not to be the one that suggests involving the authorities again, but they’re already up my ass anyway, right? Can we just turn it in?”

I stroke my thumb down her arm. “The gears of the machine of bureaucracy move slowly, and there are no guarantees the evidence would be admissible, or that it could be linked back to Volkevich.”

“Building a case against organized crime is no simple task, and bitcoin is secure against identification—it’s why they use it,” Wesley adds.

“But their leader is dead. He was the one with the passwords and everything, right?”

“ Da , Viktor is dead, but there are many more beneath him, and they will spend the rest of their lives looking for this money. Remember how I said Volkevich has men in the police department? They would use those men and whatever resources they had left to track us down and kill us in retribution for stealing everything from them.”

I can see the vein in her neck thrumming as her heart jumps, picking up in rhythm.

“So, we can’t give it back. We can’t turn it in.

We’re not going to use it ourselves for the same reason—they’d know a transaction had occurred, and the money was gone, right?

We’re not going to give it away because we’d make a target out of anyone who received it. ”

She looks to me for confirmation, and I nod.

“So… what do we do?”

I cannot take that look in her eyes, so I pull her in. She is rigid against me, but melts a little at the reassuring kiss on her temple. “James and Wesley and I still need to discuss. We will figure it out, trust me.”

She blows out a breath, shaking both of us with the motion. After a second in my embrace, tight and meant to calm, she nods. “Okay. I… um… I’ll leave you to it, then. ”

Instead of letting her turn away, I place my palm on the side of her neck and tilt her head up towards me. “I will always keep you safe , ” I remind her, leaning forward to brush my lips against hers.

“I know,” she whispers back, offering a weak smile before stepping away and disappearing out of the study.

“She’s freaking out, D,” James observes, staring at the closed door.

“ Da . I will need to calm her, I think. I would prefer to do this with a valid plan. We need to eliminate the rest of the Volkevich clan and draw Kyle out of hiding.”

Wesley chuckles, lacing his fingers across his abdomen and sitting back in his office chair. “Well… we’ve got the entire Volkevich fortune at our fingertips, so I’m thinking the plan kind of writes itself on this one.”