Page 1 of Desperate People

Prologue One-Balor

People think desperation is loud.

Chaotic.

That it shows up with flailing arms and slurred demands, reeking of booze and bad decisions.

But I know better.

Desperation is quiet.

Cold.

It creeps in when your stomach’s been empty for too long and the only warmth you know is the heat off a stolen router under your hoodie.

I learned that young, squatting in a gutted brownstone in Jersey, with nothing but a busted laptop and a chipped copy of Kali Linux to keep me company.

Turns out, I had a knack for making systems talk to me. Firewalls, encryptions, air-gapped networks—none of it could keep me out if I wanted in.

What started as survival turned into obsession, and obsession turned into a skill set that got me noticed by people who mattered.

People like my cousin Connor, who at one time owned the Callahan Protection Group.

People like Josef Aziz of Sigma International.

People like the Volkov brothers and Andres Ramirez.

These were the movers and shakers of the world.

They ran their empire from their tower in Manhattan.

Kind of like their own personal citadel. And I now had a seat at the table.

Me. A fucking nobody. A mongrel, as my asshole uncle once called me.

It wasn’t overnight.

It took years of ghosting through cyber backdoors, leaving fingerprints clean as bleach.

Then my cousin Connor sold his security firm to Sigma International, under the umbrella of Volkov Industries, and pulled me in.

I wasn’t looking to climb the ladder. I was just trying to stay out of the light.

But those in power had other plans for me.

One week I was an off-the-books ghost behind their firewalls—breaking in, making a mess of their so-called protection.

Next, I was plugging holes, optimizing protocols, and patching exploits they didn’t know existed.

Now, I’m in a tailored suit I didn’t ask for, sitting in a glass-walled boardroom with a view of the skyline and a black card with my name on it.

Balor Cruz.

Board Member.

Crazy, right?

Oh, and that’s Balor like sailor.

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