Page 30 of Undeniably Corrupt
I get a coy smile, and damn how I hate that smile.
My mother gives me a look that would make a lesser man wither. “Did he now? How interesting. He must have really wanted you to work here.”
I grunt. That’s not how it was. It’s not. But now she’s on the same bullshit ride as my friends. Great. My mother is like abloodhound, and when she catches a scent, there’s no stopping her. Now you know why I didn’t tell her. She’d have jumped to ridiculous conclusions, same as everyone else.
“I can’t believe you accepted.”
Liora laughs, and I hate her laugh almost as much as I hate her smile. “I didn’t. I told him no at first, and then he found me and groveled.”
Christ, when she puts it that way…
“I didn’t grovel. Iapologized.” I might have groveled. A moment of weakness I’m now regretting. Like hiring her.
“You apologized?” My mother is incredulous, and yeah, I don’t do that either. Shit.
And with that. “Mom, it was good to see you. I’ll text you and Dad later. Maybe we’ll meet up for dinner.” I give her a kiss, ignore my new assistant, and head down the hall to get some work done, determined now more than ever to focus on work and nothing else.
Definitely not the woman who’s already taking over more of my life than I want her to have.
10
“Mr. Moore, I have an agent from the FBI here to see you.” Champagne’s serious voice comes through the speaker on my office phone, and immediately, I tense. Fuck. What could the FBI want?
“Did we call them?” We do that from time to time when we encounter a particular cyber threat or threat actor they should know about.
“No. This is an unsolicited visit.”
Awesome. Just what I need today.
Thinking about the FBI makes bile climb up the back of my throat. MIT and Caltech have an underground hacking ring that’s been going on for decades. It’s a competition between the two schools, and it’s word of mouth and invite-only. My sophomore year at MIT, I was invited into the ring. I moved through the rounds fast and with little difficulty, and with that, I became cocky. Stupid. So fucking stupid.
I broke the rule my father had always drilled into my head.
Never hack something for pride or arrogance, and whatever you do, no matter how high up it goes, never brag about it toanyone. Because that’s how you get in trouble. That’s how you get caught.
Except I didn’t listen.
I was fooling around with a girl who I knew was into me even if I wasn’t into her. At the time, I was desperate to prove I was over Liora, so I spent more time with her than I otherwise would have. We weren’t exclusive, and I never called her anything more than my friend because I couldn’t lie to her about that either. The worst part? I hated sleeping with her. She wasn’t my girl, and my girl was all I thought about each and every fucking time. It made me furious. Even more careless and self-destructive.
Then there was my roommate. My best friend at school. He was my freshman-year roommate, and we hit it off instantly. So much so that we roomed together our sophomore year and did practically everything together.
Then one night after I annihilated my Caltech opponent by hacking the NSA’s information systems security directorate, I got drunk with Sadie and Lucas, and the two of them wormed it out of me with little resistance.
Two days later, the FBI raided my dorm room and arrested me.
Sadie didn’t like that I wouldn’t claim her as my girlfriend. Not to mention, and without my knowledge, Lucas wasn’t invited into the ring despite hacking talents of his own. Lucas was jealous that Sadie wanted me and not him and that I got into the ring and he didn’t. He wanted me out of the picture so he could have Sadie, and Sadie was pissed and jealous that I didn’t want to draw hearts in the sand with her name in them.
I spent over a week in a federal prison before I was even arraigned and let out on bail, while the FBI searched my systems to build their case. Except I wasn’t always so stupid and trusting and continually cleaned my system of everything, and the computers I had in my dorm weren’t the ones I hacked on.Those, lucky for me, were at Stone’s. The ones the FBI confiscated had nothing on them. At least nothing that a forensics analyst could find or that was illegal.
Still, it took months in court and months of fighting and months of my father doing things that put him at risk behind the scenes to get the FBI to drop their case. Essentially we moved the spotlight onto Sadie and Lucas, who weren’t exactly innocent in their own right, and when some of the “evidence” showed up on their systems, they made deals with the FBI as fast as they could. I monitor them, and I’m sure they try to monitor me, but they keep their distance because I made it clear I’d not only ruin them if they didn’t, but their families too. As it is, they have records and I don’t, and I go to great lengths to ensure their criminal pasts are the first thing to pop up on any background check.
I dropped out of MIT and became CEO of Monroe Securities, and now I look like the man who fights cybercriminals instead of being one. Occasionally the FBI comes because we have to notify them of certain cyber events. But honestly, that’s been it. Other than one person whom I haven’t seen in a while. The asshole who busted me.
“Send them in,” I reply and close out of everything on my computer and log out of my VPN.
A few moments later, the door to my office opens, and in walks a dude straight out of a movie. With his dark suit, long, dark hair pulled back into a tight, low tail, and stern dark features, he says mob more than FBI. I’ve also never met him before, so if I wasn’t already on guard by his Hollywood appearance, I certainly am by that.
I stand and reach out to shake his hand. “Hello. I’m Vander Moore.”
