Page 19 of Reaper & Ruin
Chapter Six, Denied
The cabin was dead quiet except for the soft tapping of my fingers against the keyboard. I’d been at this for hours, hunched over the small coffee table, my eyes glued to the lines of code on the screen. The glow of the laptop was the only light in the room, throwing harsh, blue-tinted shadows against the walls. Outside, the wind groaned softly through the pines, and the occasional creak of the wooden cabin only seemed to underscore the silence.
It was the kind of silence that let my mind wander—something I didn’t particularly enjoy unless it wandered onto thoughts of my girl.
I sat back for a moment, cracking my knuckles and flexing my fingers. The tension in my shoulders pulled tight, my body screaming at me to stop, to stand up, to do anything other than keep sitting here, sifting through layers of encryption and firewalls. But I couldn’t stop now. Not when I was this close.
Gio’s father hadn’t just hidden his secrets; he’d buried them. This wasn’t just paranoia. This was a man who had spent decades building his empire on lies and leverage, a man who had made enemies out of everyone—including his own blood. And I wanted to ruin him.Neededto ruin him.
Through gritted teeth, I muttered curses under my breath.
I wasn’t just hacking a system. I was dismantling a legacy, and it was fucking difficult.
The faint buzz of the laptop’s fan hummed under the soft clack of my keyboard as I tunneled deeper into the encrypted pathways. Each firewall I broke felt like another door unlocked, each step pulling me closer to whatever it was Gio’s father didn’t want anyone to see.
And then I found it.
A private server, hidden behind layers of proxy servers, masking software, and encryption. I stared at the screen, my pulse picking up. I knew this was it. This wasn’t just a random storage folder or a low-level account. This was where the real dirt was—blackmail, transactions, records of every underhanded deal Giorgio had made to keep himself in power. Whatever he didn’t want anyone to see. Especially someone like me.
If we could get into this server, get to his secrets, we could destroy him without ever risking Reaper’s siblings, mother, or anyone else innocent in the crosshairs.
But there was a catch. There always was.
The server was locked behind a user-specific passcode. Not just any passcode—a biometric one tied to an individual user. No brute-forcing my way through this. No clever backdoor. Whoever had access had to legitimately log in, or the entire system would lock down—and likely alert whoever was still monitoring it.
I glared at the blank field on the screen; the cursor blinking as if it were mocking me. My inked hands hovered over thekeyboard as I ran through every possibility in my head. There had to be a way. Not just because I never failed, but because this was my Heaven.
I wasn’t going to start letting her down now.
The floor creaked behind me, pulling me out of my thoughts. I glanced over my shoulder to see Gio standing in the doorway of the bedroom. His hair was a little messy, falling across his forehead, and his dark eyes were sharp but tired. He’d barely slept in days—not since Emilio had called him to say that his father was getting worse.
That Giorgio had forced Vincente and his wife into having an heir they didn’t want.
That he’d set up an arranged marriage for Idalia the minute she turned eighteen in a few days. With a piece of shit gangster that was twice her age.
“You’re still at it?” Gio asked, his voice low.
“Yeah,” I said, leaning back in the chair and nodding toward the screen. “I think I found something.”
That got his attention. He crossed the room and sat down across from me, his arms resting on the table as he leaned in. “What is it?”
“A server,” I said, turning the laptop slightly so he could see. “A private one. But if I’m right, this is where your father keeps his worst secrets. The kind of stuff that could take him down without hurting anyone else.”
Gio frowned, his gaze narrowing on the screen. “What’s stopping you from getting in?”
I gestured at the blinking cursor. “The passcode. It’s tied to specific users. I can’t override it without setting off alarms, and I can’t fake an access key without a valid fingerprint. And I can do many things, but I can’t magic up a fingerprint.”
He leaned back, rubbing the back of his neck as he thought. “Who has access? What is it?”
“Your dad, obviously,” I said. “Maybe a few of his trusted lieutenants. And probably you, back when you were running his operations. It looks like it’s the De Luca network for all your business dealings.”
“I know where you’re looking; it’s where all of our…informationwas kept.” Gio’s lips thinned. “You think my fingerprints will still work at all?”
“There’s only one way to find out.”
He sighed but nodded. “Fine. Try me.”
He offered me his fingerprint when I asked him to press it to a tablet I connected to my laptop. His confidence was steady, but I could see the tension in his jaw.
