Page 46 of Capturing Victory

“Exactly,” Ndari said smugly. “Do you suppose he has limits on his personal credit cards or do you think he’s one of those super rich guys like my brother who has unlimited funds?”

* * *

Jaya barely noticed when a shadow fell across her, blotting out the intensely bright sunlight. After a moment she forgot about the distraction and continued to pound away on the keyboard, her brand-new laptop perched precariously on her crossed legs where she sat on one of the pool lounge chairs. She wore a bathing suit and a pair of shorts. It had been a long, hard fought argument with Ivan to wear even this little out on the pool deck with his men around, but she’d finally won him over by promising to purchase a modest swimsuit, which she did.

“More packages’ve arrived.”

Jaya jumped and barely managed to grab her laptop before it took a nasty spill off the end of the lounger and into the pool. Her head swivelled up and she found herself staring at an amused Keane who stood towering over her. She wondered how long he’d been standing there. Now that she was back online she noticed that Ivan’s men seemed to enjoy sneaking up on her more and more often. She frowned. Maybe she should tell Ivan to put bells on them.

“The princess is opening them in her private quarters. Says she’ll put your stuff away in your room for you.” He drawled the wordprincesslike it was offensive. Jaya wasn’t exactly sure what was going on between Keane and Ndari, but the tension between the two was becoming explosive. They came from two completely different worlds and though there was a definite attraction, Jaya didn’t see how any kind of relationship could be possible.

“Thank you for telling me,” Jaya murmured, a hint of sarcasm in her voice. There was absolutely no need for him to interrupt her to tell her about the packages. “What do you really want?”

“What’re you doing there?” he asked, nodding toward the laptop.

She eyed the computer then glanced back at him. After a moment she decided to tell him. “I’m locking a certain dictator who’s slowly starving his people and inflating the currency in his country out of his personal accounts so he can see what it’s like to go hungry. I mean, I’m sure he’ll gain access to funds somehow, but he’ll be uncomfortable for a few days.”

Keane chuckled. “Bravo, canary.” He shook his head. “Dangerous though, if you get yourself caught.”

“They won’t catch me,” she said confidently.

“We caught you, canary. And put you in a cage.” His blue eyes turned serious, piercing her with a warning.

She nodded and closed the laptop, setting it aside. “Yes, and now I have you and Ivan to protect me. Trust me, Keane, I won’t do anything stupid.”

“Like keep an unauthorized phone on the premises,” he said coolly, his gaze flattening.

She gasped, shock hitting her. She could feel adrenaline rushing through her limbs, screaming at her to run away. She had to force herself to sit still. She wasn’t under threat, not yet. If Keane had told Ivan about the phone, this would be a very different conversation. Why hadn’t he told Ivan about the phone? First though, she needed to know how. “How did you know?” she asked, her voice quivering.

“Saw you in the security feed at the mall,” he answered easily, dropping to his haunches beside her, his head now level with hers. “Boss asked me to see if you’d knocked them all out when you assaulted the system back at the jewellery store. It looked like you had. Wasn’t until a few days ago that one of our tech guys found a camera in the food court that hadn’t gone down.”

“Wh-why haven’t you told Ivan?” she asked breathlessly, her mind racing ahead to every possibility. Keane could still tell Ivan. Ivan could still freak out and decide to punish her through his worst threat, murdering someone she loved. She had to warn Ndari!

“Have to be honest here, canary. If I’d seen that tape a week ago you’d’ve been up shit creek. I’d would’ve handed you over to the boss and let him sort it out. But I only saw it two days ago. Which means you’ve had the phone for a week and haven’t done shit with it.” His voice was low. He didn’t want their conversation overheard. “I’m curious about your intentions, if you have any at all. Could be, you took it in the heat of the moment and now you don’t know what to do with it.”

Jaya took a deep breath. She didn’t want to drag Ndari into this mess, but she needed to be completely honest. She needed Keane to trust her. She believed it was going to keep the two women safe in this situation. She told him exactly what’d happened with the phone from start to finish. She also promised to give him the phone, relieved that she wouldn’t have it hanging over her head any longer.

When she was done telling him her side of the story, he nodded and said, “Good girl. I’ll be having a wee chat with the princess to make sure she corroborates what you’re saying. If she does, then this need go no further than the three of us. I’ll make sure the tech guy forgets what he knows as well.”

Though Jaya was relieved she also desperately wanted to run to Ndari and tell her to tell only the truth when talking to Keane. She suspected Ndari was going to either clam up or spout off at the unpredictable, potentially violent man and either scenario wasn’t going to be in her best interest. As if reading her mind, Keane stood up and grinned down at her. “Oh no you don’t. You best be leaving her royal highness to me.”

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Weeks passed and the trust between Ivan and Jaya grew. Jaya was seeing Ivan as a different man than the one who kidnapped her and kept her locked in cages. A different man than the one she’d spent half a lifetime hearing described to her in gruesome detail. But at the same time, Ivan was still the same man she had been attracted to from the very beginning. He was cool, in control and completely, unbearably dominant. He only warmed for Jaya. He only unbent for the woman he loved. If anything, his newfound love made him more unapologetically vicious to the world around them.

Jaya tried to point this out to him, tried to get him soften his approach to others. Especially his poor secretary, Anna, who flew in from Athens for a three-day business meeting. But he would not be swayed. He simply looked at Jaya as though she should know better and carried on with business as usual; murder, mayhem and arms dealing on an international scale. Or so she presumed. He didn’t involve her in his work and she was glad he chose not to.

Ivanhadgiven Jaya a few restrictions when he’d given her a laptop and access to the internet. If she wanted to work, then she had to run her contracts through either Ivan or Keane before she agreed to them. She could shop at will and she had to keep a low profile while chatting. Under no circumstances could she tell anyone where she was or who she was with. Ivan was to have access to her internet and chat history at any time if he chose to look.

So when she finally felt brave enough to contact Father, she had to do it completely in code and she had to strike a perfect balance so she wouldn’t tip Ivan’s tech people off. She decided to contact him in a chat room on the dark web, which would automatically arouse Ivan’s suspicion, but could be easily explained once he read the transcripts. She thought it might arouse too much suspicion to try a regular web connect given that most of her work was conducted through the dark web. If she put the suspicious stuff right out in the open, Ivan would most likely sink his teeth into that instead and ignore the deeper subtext. Or so she hoped.

As usual, Ivan left early that morning, kissing her on the head before rolling out of bed and leaving for his morning workout. She knew she likely wouldn’t see him again until that evening and felt safe in pulling out her laptop and settling on the balcony to their room. There was no point in wasting a gorgeous morning breeze while planning subterfuge. She turned the laptop on and quickly got to work, bringing up the restricted site she used to contact certain clients. It came up with a notice saying it had been shut down and users were to contact the administrator for further information. She clicked on the unhappy face icon which brought up username and password boxes. She filled them out and was taken to correct site; simply called Buy and Sell Web Services. But it was so much more than that. This wasthewebsite, where the world’s elite hackers convened to bid for jobs. Or if they were really good, like XSourse, the clients vied and bid for her attention.

Jaya grinned in relief when she saw exactly what she was looking for, an ad looking for a specific hacker. Her. She saw that the ad had been put up repeatedly every week since she went off the grid. It said:

Daddy is looking for his lost cat. The cat is small with dark hair and sticky paws. He’s good at getting into spaces he shouldn’t. Contact me if you’ve seen him, I just want to know that he’s safe.

Jaya wrinkled her nose and rolled her eyes at the ‘Daddy’ reference, but they’d agreed that Father should place a lost cat ad, so she was pretty sure it was him. She supposed he didn’t want to call himself Father because she and his other foundlings called him Father so maybe it was too recognizable, but still… she glanced at Haty who was lolling on her back on the warm paving stones.

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