LITMIR.BIZ

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      “Two times?” Leo asked with cutting focus to the gist of the vast problem on their hands.

       “Sì.”

      “Cristo, you’re a freaking genius, Massimo. How is that even possible?”

      It wasn’t arrogance that made Massimo nod. Computers were his thing. The one thing he was the master of. “The hacker is obviously extremely talented. A true genius, no doubt.”

      Leo’s curse exploded in the basement. A few minutes later, his brother was all business again. “But you have the proof tying it to this person, right?”

      “Sì. I used the bots to piggyback onto the malware he—”

      “Normal people words, Massimo, per favore,” his brother said with a smile, for the millionth time in their lives. “Words a small brain like mine can understand.”

      As always, a spurt of warmth jolted through his veins at Leo’s joke. His brother was no fool. But when Massimo had been at his lowest, Leo, with his words, full of concern and praise, had urged him toward realizing his full potential. “I have proof. I have even triangulated the hacker’s physical location. New York.”

      “That’s fantastic. I can arrange for a meeting with the commissioner in a half hour. He’ll get the cybercrime division involved. We’ll have the hacker behind bars by tonight and the identity of whoever orchestrated this—”

      “No. I don’t want the polizia involved. Not yet.”

      “What? Why the hell not?”

      “I’ve already figured out a cyber club where this hacker plays. I’ve established contact.”

      “Contact with the hacker? Why?”

      Massimo shrugged. He couldn’t exactly put it into words—curiosity, thrill, even a certain amount of camaraderie. The hacker intrigued him. “I want to get to know him. Learn how he operates.”

      “Dios mio, Massimo, he breached our security. Twice.”

      “Essattemente! He could do it again and again. You have to admit that there’s something...fishy about the whole thing. None of the clients’ financials were leaked. I have bots working everywhere they could be sold, like black markets, on the Dark Net. They haven’t surfaced anywhere.

      “It’s as if the hacker is taunting me, playing with me. He’s hard to pin down.”

      “What are you suggesting?”

      “Let me develop a relationship with him. Let me get into his head. When I know how he works, how he’s doing it, I’ll spring the trap.”

      “I want your word that he won’t hit our servers again.”

      “You losing faith in me, Leo?” he taunted, that resentment in him finding voice. Reminding him that Massimo wasn’t still the always sick runt their father went off on whenever he was on one of his frequent alcoholic tirades. That he wasn’t the younger brother running to his older brother’s arms to hide from his father. That he was the computer genius who’d designed products that generated billions in revenue.

      Leo paused at the high-tech sliding doors, frowning.

      “Give me a week and I’ll give you the hacker, his life story and the proof of his illegal activities, all tied up with a bow like a Christmas present.”

      “A week. At the most,” Leo pushed back. “I want him behind bars.”

      One week later

      Massimo stood outside the cyber club exit—a metal door of undistinguishable color at the rear of a dilapidated building in one of the run-down neighborhoods of Brooklyn. A far cry from his penthouse that overlooked Central Park that he’d left behind an hour ago.

      March snow carpeted the parking grounds in the dark alley, thankfully suppressing the odors emanating from the vast trash containers that stood two feet from him.

      The hacker, he’d found, was very much a creature of habit. Unlike Massimo, and much against the popular culture’s rendition of a chaotic, free-spirited genius. Two evenings a week, the hacker came to this club, at exactly eight minutes past nine p.m. and stayed for exactly forty-three minutes. Before going completely off-line.

      Like a junkie allowing himself a very strictly mandated and measured fix.

      Massimo hadn’t found him anywhere else.

      Which meant all Massimo had had were two sessions of forty-three minutes to get to know how the guy operated. And he had. Hackers were a mysterious and antisocial bunch, and yet boastful, too, especially someone at the level at which this particular one operated. All he’d needed to do was compliment him on his modification of a security challenge posed by the master of the club. He hadn’t quite owned up to the breach but the connection had been made.

      His heart fluttering against his rib cage like a caged bird, Massimo tucked his hands into the pockets of his trench coat. Adrenaline hadn’t hit him this hard since the release of his latest software product. No, that wasn’t true. The last time he’d been this excited had been when he’d shored up the tunnel this very same hacker had created into BCS.

      The metallic whine of the heavy door made his spine lock. Buffeted by the collar of his coat against the harsh wind, Massimo watched a slight figure swathed in black from head to toe, a dark contrast against the snow clinging to every crevice and roof of the building, walk down the steps.

      The howl of the frigid wind pushed the hood away from the figure’s face, revealing a delicate jawline with a wide, plump mouth. A too-sharp nose and a high forehead. Broad but sharp cheekbones. A pointed chin. Slender shoulders held an almost boyish figure with long legs swathed in black denim and knee-high boots.

      Jet-black hair, wild and curly, the only thing that betrayed the fact that she was a woman. No, the soft fragility, the sharply delicate bones, couldn’t be mistaken for a man.

      A painfully young, delicately beautiful woman.

      It couldn’t be her... This fragile young woman couldn’t be the hacker that had taken down his firewall, could she? Couldn’t be the diabolically intelligent computer genius that Massimo had been chatting up for the last week. The hacker that Leonardo wanted behind bars pronto. The one who’d kept him up for a fortnight now, given him sleepless nights...

      Not a single one of his girlfriends had ever done it.

      He laughed, a harsh bark that sounded loud in the silence.

      Like a deer caught in the headlights, the hacker’s feet frozen in the snow, her face turned toward him.

      Brown eyes with long lashes alighted on his face and paused. He saw her swallow, felt that gaze dip to his mouth and trail back up to meet his eyes. A soft sound, almost like a kitten’s sigh, filled the silence around them. Followed by the soft treads of her boots as she returned to the car.

      No, he wasn’t wrong.

      He’d even had a quick chat with the hacker from his car before he’d stepped out. He...or she had been inside that building. On an impulse, Massimo grabbed his tablet from the car and sent a quick message through the chat boards.

      It wasn’t a sure thing since the hacker never used the chat boards outside of the cyber club. And yet, Massimo had teased him today with a glimpse of the new security software he was building for Gisela’s father’s company. He knew the hacker had been intrigued, had even stayed beyond the forty-three minutes he usually allowed himself.

      Vitruvian Man: I can show you the double encryption layer for the new design.

      His heart raced. Dios mio, he felt like a teenage boy waiting for his first kiss.

      The woman paused, pulled her

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