Page 31 of Taming the Bear
When Joe takes a sip, he places the cup on the dark wooden coffee table next to the three remotes. His green eyes seem sharp and I know he’s trying to figure out the bees nest that he just jumped into.
“Start from the beginning.”
The Bear
Having Chantal in my space after I feel as if she deceived me is a lot for me to take in right now. I love having her here and she makes my home seem less like a bachelor pad, but I still want to throttle her.
The whole ride over here, I was contemplating where to take her. If I should take her back to the clubhouse or to my house in order to have a serious conversation. Secrets and betrayal is what led me to finding Chantal in the first place, and I don’t want to feeling fucking paranoid when I’m with her.
“I graduated from tech school at age fourteen. I was one of those super geniuses that they show on T.V. When I graduated, I couldn’t live on my own because I was too young and the state said I couldn’t. My parents worked a lot and I spent the next four years making a name for myself in the hacking industry.”
I take in what she’s saying and nod my head to let her know to continue. I knew she was young, but I’m wondering how young she actually is. “All right…”
She takes a drink of her scotch and I fight the urge to ask her if she’s eighteen. Fuck. I can’t be associated with someone under the age. I would be thrown in prison with my rap sheet and everything.
“I started to become friends with this guy online and he introduced me to the whole underbelly of cyberspace.”
“What guy?” I demand and tense up a little at hearing her being involved with another guy. This is crazy. I shouldn’t fucking care if she’s been with other guys. Tell that to the stupid muscle in my chest that has different plans. Yeah, my damn heart beats faster and then slower at the same time at the mention of this other man.
And I want to kill him if he saw Chantal naked before I did. If he got to sink into her tight little body before I did. Hell, if he even thinks of her, I will kill him.
She nods her perfect little heart shaped face and smiles with only one side of her face. “No, it wasn’t like that with him. I loved it, though. The hacking. Tracking the lines of the web to see where everything ended up. I did that for about six months. Star Fleet, was his online name, was mentor for the six months and showed me everything. It was about a year into the hacking cycle, that he told me to hack into this man’s information.”
My gut churns as I think of all of the bad things that could have happened to her. She was only fifteen! Fifteen years old and hacking into people’s shit. No wonder Big Sir is pissed off at her.
“I didn’t realize it at the time, but I hacked into a police officer’s computer. I had lists and times of his scheduled arrests and what his plans were going to be.” Chantal takes a deep breath and then let’s it out before continuing her story. As she does, she looks at her knees to not look at me.
I hated seeing her look as vulnerable as she does but I need to know what I just jumped into. I fucking cringe inside to think that I have to bring this information to my club. It’s bad enough that Flip was there and now he knows that my girl has ties to Big Sir. One of our most hated rivals.
“Star Fleet said that he needed them for his mentor. I began decoding every crypted file on his computer until I found out that he was gathering information on Big Sir.”
“Okay, then what happened?” I prompted.
She takes another breath and swallows the remaining scotch in her cup. When she sets it down on the table next to mine, she moves her left leg to sit on it. “Quit stalling, Chantal. I meant it when I said that I take care of what’s mine. I need to know what the fuck is happening so I can end it.”
“Star Fleet told Big Sir what I had found and Big Sir came to my house to have a chat with me. He demanded that I showed him everything that I could find on him and when I did, he made me an offer. He told me that if I deleted all of the evidence on him that he would pay me a hundred grand to get my business up and running.”
“Did you?” I question. That wouldn’t explain why he thinks that she owes him if she deleted his records.
Chantal nods her head and then looks over at me. “I did it. I was fifteen, a hundred grand was a lot of money to me. I could have done so much with it and then help my parents out. As it was, they worked all of the time to afford to put me in special schools and everything.”
It’s my turn to down the remaining contents of my scotch and then I place my hand on her thigh to encourage her to keep going. I could sense that I was close to finding out what he had on her so I could fucking end it.
“The officer that I hacked into, sensed that there was something missing and wanted to know what it was. He took his shit to the IT department and then uncovered everything that I deleted. Since I was still new to everything, I didn’t know what trojan to place on his files to block the tracking.”
“So…” I begin and then slip my arm over Chantal’s shoulders. For some reason I wanted her closer to me than she was already. “Did Big Sir get arrested?”
Almost as if she’s been doing it forever, Chantal rests her head against my pec and takes a deep breath. I could tell that she’s using my cologne to help center her. I fucking loved it.
Use whatever you want from me, baby. Whatever you need, I will give it to you.
“Yeah, he did. He sent Slim Jim and Big Don to my house to demand that I give them back the money that I owed to them and I couldn’t do it. I already bought a shit ton of equipment with it and helped pay off the loans my parents took out to pay for my school. I didn’t have much left over. That was when he started to demand that I pay him back.”
I scratch my chin and then purse my lips. “So, those ten months that Big Sir was in lock up, he was demanding interest on the money that he gave you for deleting his record?”
“Yeah,” she says.
“Have you been paying him?” I nuzzle into her hair and relish the scent of her honey shampoo.
