Page 14 of My Merciless Don

I nodded my thanks taking the tray from her. “Did Marco tell you to tell me that?” I asked out of curiosity.

“No ma'am. Mr. Valerio did.”

I cocked an eyebrow. That was the brother, as well as the underboss. I knew there were also a sister and a mother. I wondered if I would meet them. I hadn't really taken their presence into account in my infiltration strategy, mainly because they were not decision makers. But if we were all living in the same house, I might just have to.

“Thank you,” I said to the maid in dismissal, and she nodded and walked away. I watched her go before closing the door to my room and putting the tray on the bedside table. Clearly I was not a prisoner anymore, or at least my scope of movement had been widened to the rest of the house. I figured if I tried to leave the compound, someone would probably stop me.

That wasn't a concern since I had no plans to.

I reached into the pocket of my borrowed sweatpants and extracted my communicator putting it in my ear. “Good morning Kylie. And how are you today?”

“Morning boss. Did you sleep well?”

“Better than yesterday. They have me in a guest room now.”

“Progress,” she said sounding impressed.

“Yeah, sort of. It's not like they trust me, and Marco isn't exactly falling into my arms.”

“Give it time. So now what?”

“Did you did you manage to copy the files yesterday?”

“Of course. I didn't leave a trace, but you were right about them not trusting you. George checked whether you were up to something nefarious.”

“Oh really…” I grinned to myself. It was good to be respected and always nice to have a worthy foe to defeat. What fun was there in pulling off a clever heist if no one was intelligent enough to appreciate it?

“Yes really.” Kylie said, “be careful.”

“Aren't I always?”

Kylie snorted derisively and then hung up on me. I couldn't blame her – I could be known to get a little… reckless sometimes.

Once I was done with my breakfast, I sat by the window waiting to see if someone would come for me. I didn't want to presume too much by walking around unsupervised. By lunchtime no one had shown their faces so I decided to wander down to the computer lab. I wanted them to get comfortable with seeing me there.

George was hard at work, and I gave him a wave as I sat down opposite him. “What news?” I asked.

He looked up, and gave me a distracted grin, “Look I don’t really have the time right now to talk.”

I raised my hands in surrender, “I get that. I just wanted to see if there was some movement on the Triad deal.”

He nodded, eyes on his screen, “They're setting up a meeting. I assume the Capo will let you know if they need you.”

“Do you have any profiles on the current leadership. I wanna brush up on them.”

He looked up at me as if trying to assess my motives. I gave him my most wide-eyed innocent look. With a sigh he picked up a laptop and handed it over. “Knock yourself out,” he said.

“Thanks,” I answered surprised. I opened the machine and switched it on, going straight to the Internet. I expected it to be restricted but I found that I could check my mail, even send Kylie a message on my instant messenger.

“Hmm…”

George looked up, “Problem?”

“No. I was just expecting more restrictions on your machine.”

He smiled, “What good would that do? You’d just get around them, right?”

I give him a one-shouldered shrug, “Yeah well that's half the fun, isn't it?”

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