Page 36 of My Merciless Don

I went back down to the computer lab armed with this new knowledge. “George, I need you to find out how Audry managed to fuck with the cameras.”

“Audry? She did this?” he asked in a tone that was half admiring.

I narrowed my eyes at him even as I nodded. “Find out what else she did. Check all your pockets.” I looked from George to the other people in the room, my brother Valerio, and my head of security. If Audry had needed to skip out it was because she'd stolen something.

Everybody scattered to their stations, as I stood behind one of the chairs in the computer lab clutching it tightly. I breathed in and out slowly. I pushed away the thought of Audry having betrayed me, knowing that it was foolishness.

She had never declared any loyalty to me and she was living in my house under duress. It was my own fault if I had lost sight of that - if I had thought we were on the same side just because of a superficial resemblance, and a conversation next to a gravestone.

Well played Martin jr.

Valerio came back just as George gave a loud exclamation. I turned to Valerio, eyebrow raised. “I went over the accounts.” He said, “There's been a breach, and it's not confined just to our systems.”

I stopped breathing, turning to George.

He didn't wait for me to say a word, “She introduced the virus into our system. She got into the mainframe. That means she's got us all. Every single member of the council.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

AUDRY

Iexpected to feel lighter as I walked away from the Cassio family Pasadena compound, after sticking that note on the camera. It hadn't been an easy thing, making sure the security cameras were down long enough for me to make my escape, and evading the guards on patrol. Luckily, the electronic surveillance was mostly geared towards keeping things out rather than in.

Like cat woman, I somersaulted over the electric fence, rappelling down the ten-foot fence like Tom Cruise down that tall building in Mission Impossible.

Exhilarating stuff.

Usually had my blood pumping with excitement.

So why do I feel like I’m carrying a ten-ton elephant on my shoulders?

I could barely get myself to lift my hand and put the note on the camera. Walking away from the compound felt like negotiating my way through quicksand. Everything felt ten times harder than it should.

What is going on with me? Am I getting my period?

I couldn’t understand all these things I was feeling. Things like pain and regret. “What the fuck?” I said aloud.

“What is it?” Kylie asked urgently in my ear, “Problem?”

“No.” I swallowed the lump in my throat, blinking the moisture from my eyes. “I got out okay. I’m on the way to you.”

“Great. Wonderful. See you in…?”

I checked my watch, and then looked up and down the street. Dawn was just breaking, and the sunrise looked like it was going to be a doozy. Kylie should have left a car for me at the end of the street. Meanwhile, I tried to blend in with the early morning joggers in my sweat suit. My bracelet, beeping blue, let me know that the virus I’d introduced in Marco’s systems was doing what it was meant to. I didn’t know why my stomach was burning with what felt like guilt at the thought.

“I’ll be there in about fifteen, as long as I find the car sometime soon.”

She chuckled. “It should be in sight by now. A silver Tesla, blending in with all the other cars on that street.”

I squinted down the road and saw the car, in a parking lot by the coffee shop at the corner. Kylie was right – there were two other Teslas parked in the same lot, probably belonging to early morning coffee customers.

I began to jog in earnest, avoiding all the neighborhood cameras by hugging the fences until I reached the end of the street. I slipped into the car and drove away, hoping no one had noticed me. I couldn’t help staring into the rear view, my heart aching more the further away I got from him. I mean the further away I got from the estate. In the little time I’d spent there, it had begun to feel like home.

I’d never had one of those.

Growing up in an orphanage, I’d been fostered a few times but then they’d return me for being too much of a problem child or in one infamous case, the husband turned out to be a pedophile who was filming the kids in his care in compromising ways. I was only there for two days before the FBI busted in and arrested him for making and distributing child pornography, so I thankfully did not have to deal with all of… that. But it just solidified how hopeless it was to ever think I could find a family that wanted me.

Why did they have to be so nice to me? I laughed bleakly at myself. Poor little unwanted Audry. Nobody’s ever been nice to her.

---