Page 54 of Vow to Me

Istare out at the city below from where I sit behind my desk. The view from my office is the only reason I bought this building. It’s the only place I find peace—and yet, right now I’m plagued by the thoughts running rampant around my head as I flick my gaze to the laptop and thumb drive Luca gave me last night, something about the whole situation feels off.

I’ve spent the last three hours going over the images and videos on the thumb drive while simultaneously hacking the cameras of the locations the images were taken. The first image of Izzy at a store talking to a black-haired woman are just that—from the store’s security cameras, it seems like she’s just helping the woman pick a flash drive. In the image sent to Luca it looks as though she’s passing her something—and she is, what the image doesn’t show is that she’s passing her a hard drive that she took from the shelf. And while I’m unable to place where the image of the woman and that Columbian fucker takes place, I’m willing to bet my billion-dollar empire that it’s a set up to perceive Izzy as a villain.

The security cameras in the club are a different story, and while she did flirt and dance with him, after she sat with a groupof his friends, he appears loose lipped, and she appears calculative before slipping out of the back entrance of the club.

When I met my best friend’s wife at the mayor’s gala, she didn’t come across the type to do what everyone currently suspects of her. I’m usually good at reading people, and even though I could tell she had demons behind those chocolate brown eyes of hers, I really don’t fucking think she would do this to Luca. Which is why I’m conflicted about the whole thing. Luca is adamant that she’s a traitorous bitch, whereas I’m more inclined to agree with Enzo.

Not that I’d ever voice my opinion. If I ever muttered the words “Enzo is right” in the presence of Luca, Marco or my brothers, they’d all lock me up and bleed me dry of the insanity swimming in my veins without a second thought. What they don’t realize, is that while yes, he’s a fucking lunatic, but he’s also a fucking genius and anyone who disagrees is just too blind to fucking see it.

I sigh and run my hand through my hair before flicking my attention to her laptop, I flip open the lid and furrow my brow. While at first glance, it may seem like a regular laptop, anyone in my line of work would be able to tell it’s been modified to some degree.

I power on the device and go to hack my way in but immediately hit with firewalls.

And not just any firewalls.

Firewalls I fucking recognize.

Holy shit.

I take my phone from my pocket and dial Luca before bringing the phone to my ear, he answers on the first ring.

“Did you find anything?”

“Not sure yet, I just wanted to ask… what does Izzy do for work?”

“Something to do with consulting, I’m not really sure…” he continues talking but I tune it out.

I know exactly what she does for work, she’s my fucking partner in the side business I run alongside the public one.

When I needed help two years ago in setting up the systems for FreeThem, I foundThe Scorpiononline and hired them to help. They were so fucking good that I asked them to help me full time, and they did. I spent months trying to figure out their identity, but I’m no fucking match for them.

They were a ghost, and I respected that.

While I may not have been able to figure them out, there’s no way in hell they didn’t figure me out. I’m fucking good at what I do, but even I wouldn’t be able to hide my identity away from them. Her.Izzy Romano.

I think back to the night I met her, when Luca introduced us, there was a flicker of surprise and recognition in her gaze. At the time I just figured she recognized me from the fucking magazines that hound my ass, now I know different. She knew exactly who I was.

Jesus fucking Christ. This just got so much more complicated.

This whole thing could be because of her online persona and not the Mafia. Or her supposed lover that I’m becoming more convinced by the second isn’t true.

I can’t exactly reveal any of this to my best friend. She didn’t tell him for a reason. Just like I haven’t told him about it for a reason.

Luca thinks I run things completely on the up and up apart from the odd times I help him out. He has no idea that my security company is basically just a front for a group of mercenaries who save sex trafficking victims and kill off the scum who buy and sell them.

Fuck.

“Alec? You there?”Fuck, I forgot about him.

I clear my throat. “Here, I’ll call you if I find anything.” I hang up the phone before he could question me further.

I focus back on the laptop, determined to breach the firewalls and figure out what the fuck is going on.

Hours go by and I slowly make progress, if this was Izzy hacking into my security she would have been in within an hour. I’ve been at it for four and I’m not even halfway there.

I’m just about to get up to stretch my legs and an alert pops up on the screen. It’s written in the code we usually use to communicate locations of victims she’s uncovered.

I set up my laptop so I can unravel the code while still trying to breach her systems. After an hour or so I finally gain access to her laptop and at the same time the decoding finishes so I can ready her message.

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