Page 212 of Ruin Me Gently

They exchanged a glance before Silas said, “AIFG.”

“That’s not words.”

“Artificial Intelligence Facial Gateway,” Finn clarified, spinning slightly in his chair. “It’s a facial recognition company. One of the best.”

I folded my arms. “And?”

Silas sighed, rubbing the bridge of his nose. “And we’ve been working on getting access.”

Finn leaned forward. “It’s unethical as fuck, but we’re calling in an old… college friend. He works in the backend of their systems. He’s a little… flexible with the rules.”

I narrowed my eyes. “Flexible?”

“Dodgy as hell,” Finn corrected himself. “This is the same guy who hacked into the university servers in our senior year because a professor gave him a bad grade. Wiped the whole faculty login, deleted years of research, and redirected every university pay-check to an animal shelter in rural Montana. Don’t know why we didn’t think of him sooner.”

I blinked. “… What?”

“Yeah,” Finn nodded. “They had to cancel half the payroll that month. They never caught him. He ghosted about seven years ago, but popped up two years later working cybersecurity for a Fortune 500 company. And now?” He gestured vaguely. “He’s working for AIFG, but on the side, he sells backdoor access to people like us who need… let’s say, unofficial favours.”

I narrowed my eyes. “So you’re telling me this guy went from cyberterrorising his college, to running high-level security, and now he’s just committing corporate espionage for fun?”

“Pretty much,” Finn grinned. “And if we slip him enough cash, he’ll let us piggyback off AIFG’s network and track Clark in real time.”

“How much does he want?” Silas asked.

“Well, he started at seven figures, but I talked him down.”

My breath caught in my throat. “Seven figures?”

Finn nodded. “Yep.”

I let out a short, stunned laugh. “As in, a million?”

“Yep.”

Silas exhaled sharply. “Finn.”

Finn held up his hands. “Relax. I got him to settle at four-fifty.”

“Four-fifty what?” I choked out.

“Thousand.”

Was I hearing that right? “You talked him down to nearly half a million dollars?”

Finn grinned. “Yeah. Pretty good, right?”

“That is not talking him down! That is still half a million dollars!”

He waved a hand dismissively. “It’s fine. We’ve spent more on dumb shit we didn’t need.”

I turned to Silas, waiting for him to shut this down, to agree with me that this was too much, that this didn’t need to happen—but he was already pulling out his phone. “Fine. Set up the meeting and transfer it into the Meridian account.”

“Already ahead of you, boss.” Finn said, cracking his knuckles.

Silas shot him a look. “You better not be. I want this locked down before the money moves.”

Finn held up three fingers. “Scout’s honour.”

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