Total pages in book: 47
Estimated words: 43071 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 215(@200wpm)___ 172(@250wpm)___ 144(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 43071 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 215(@200wpm)___ 172(@250wpm)___ 144(@300wpm)
Sighing, I glanced at Ash again. “Guess it’s your lucky day since Rebel just saved your ass.”
“Does that mean you’re unlucky today?” Ash grinned and looked over his shoulder at no one in particular and called out, “Someone get me a fucking deck of cards!”
King scowled as he stalked into the office, waited for Cerberus to follow him in, and closed the door behind him. Then his eyes immediately went to me. “What’s happening with the Kollins operation?”
I paused and turned to face him as he sank down into the chair behind his desk. “Financials are done. Air fucking tight.”
Kollins was one of our clients. One who no longer existed because we’d done our job.
“The documents are all notarized and filed in the right places,” Ash added. “Wizard closed the loop on the digital shit.”
King nodded. “Blaze is on a run with Havoc and Tomcat, but they’ll be back late tonight. We’ll move Kollins from the safehouse tomorrow, get him to the new location, and close the books on that one.”
He asked for updates on a few other items of club business, and it took all of my discipline not to demand we get to Poppy’s situation. Everything King did was deliberate. His mind was always at least ten steps ahead at any given moment, and although I understood his process, I hated it right now.
When all the other shit was out of the way, we could turn our focus onto the assholes fucking with us and putting my woman in danger.
King’s expression turned even more serious as he leaned forward, his elbows resting on the polished surface of his desk. “Step it out for me.”
Wizard straightened from his slouch, flipped his glasses onto his head, then tapped a few rapid keystrokes on his laptop before angling it toward King. The room fell silent except for the soft hum of the fan overhead, the tension crackling as Wizard met King’s hard stare.
“BAM Financial Intelligence.” Wizard’s irritation was clear in his voice. “They’ve been running stress tests on underground financial networks. Basically, they’re probing to find weaknesses—mapping out vulnerabilities so they can sell that information to their clients.”
King’s gaze sharpened, his eyes darkening dangerously. “Who else?”
Wizard ran a frustrated hand through his hair, knocking his glasses askew. His brows were drawn together as he pulled up another screen of data. “Several smaller outfits, but we’re the primary target. The Hounds are high-value—our network is complex, layered, and hard to penetrate. Cracking our system would make their data extremely valuable.”
Rebel let out a dark chuckle, shaking his head slowly, a lethal glint in his eyes. “The motherfuckers really thought they could slip this shit past Ace?”
Wizard nodded curtly. “They’re damn good. Methodical as hell. Those micro-probes Ace flagged? That’s them mapping response patterns—timing, thresholds, and escalation triggers. They push a little, see how long it takes compliance to react, then adjust. I think they truly didn’t know who they were going up against. They assumed no one would look so closely at these tiny little blips. Even Ace admitted that most people would have missed them.”
His gaze flicked briefly toward me before returning to King.
“I’m positive they selected Poppy deliberately,” he continued, his voice edged with quiet anger. “Junior analyst, low clearance tier and high validation volume. Perfect cover. Every time she cleared one of those flags, she unknowingly validated their probes. To anyone watching from the outside, it looked like routine compliance activity. Clean. Boring. Nothing worth escalating.”
“Unless someone shed a light on it.”
Ash cocked his head to the side, his expression thoughtful. “Once that happened, some people might take a closer look.”
Wizard leaned back slightly. “They built the whole thing around her access point. This wasn’t random. They studied the system, selected their entry, and chose Poppy as the key. Which also meant that if something went sideways, she could be...”
He trailed off, and I finished his thought for him. “The scapegoat.”
King absorbed the information with a calculating look before his sharp gaze shifted back to Wizard. “How much intel do we have on BAM?”
Wizard leaned forward, elbows resting on his knees as he rubbed his jaw. His usually calm demeanor was tense, a reflection of how seriously he was taking this. “Their structure is tricky—layers on layers.”
“We just got past the worst of the firewalls this morning,” I added. “Everything we brought to this meeting was from the information behind them. But there are still some barriers. Not many, and they’re weak, but it will still take some time to get to the root of the company.”
King rubbed a hand absently over Cerberus’s broad head. The massive Cane Corso lay sprawled at his feet, the dog’s yellow gaze tracking the movement in the room. He was astute enough to know that now wasn’t the time to be begging for attention.