Page 4 of Hacked For Love
My phone rings suddenly as I’m downing the last of my orange juice. I tense slightly, realizing it’s the front desk. I’m not expecting any visitors forhours.
I scoop it up and connect the call. “This had better be good, Grayson,” I grumble at the building’s securitysupervisor.
“I’m sorry, sir,” he replies in a slightly strained voice. “But Ms. Siddiq and Mr. Castleton are here together to see you. They say it’surgent.”
My eyebrows climb. My head of ITandhead of security showing up for an emergency face-to-face?That is a really bad sign.“Let them up atonce.”
I’m still in my shirtsleeves as I leave the breakfast area, cuffs rolled to my elbows, brushing a few crumbs off my vest. Whatever is going on, I’ll handle it. I’ve never faced a challenge I couldn’tmeet.
Twenty minutes later, though, I’m dealing with something that hits me a lot closer to home than an apartment fire in the bad part of town. “How much did theytake?”
Laura Siddiq, a tiny woman whose round face, large brown eyes, and nervous movements remind me of a chipmunk, has handled my IT since I first made my fortune five years ago. She also handles security and upkeep for my Bitcoin wallets, miners, and accounts, which is why she has a look of horror on her face rightnow.
John Castleton, meanwhile, looks a little frustrated, and I can’t blame him. He handles the physical security of my home, businesses, and fortune, which doesn’t allow him to help much in a situation like this. He’s a dapper mountain of a man with a shaved head that gleams like ebony and a coiled-spring look to him, like a tensepanther.
“Twenty-five hundred Bitcoin in total,” Laura sighs out nervously, her fingers knotting together in herlap.
That is a third of a billion fucking dollars.The cold fact of the robbery sinks in like a stone in my gut—and when it hits the bottom, angerblooms.
It’s not even a tenth of myliquidassets. Barely a bite. But it’s the first time that someone has dared to steal from me, and I’m suddenly ready to kick someass.
“Any leads?” I continue in a stony voice, and Laura flinches slightly…then blinks and relaxes slightly, as if she’d been expecting me to fire her rightoff.
“Well, whoever it was is brilliant. You know how good our cybersecurity is—we worked together to create it. But this person slipped in like a ghost through a wall. There aren’t even traces of their entry into the system.” She relaxes slightly as she sees me calm alittle.
“How the hell did someone blow past all our hard work like it was nothing?” It hurts my pride to think that there’s someone out there better at hacking than I am. But then again, I haven’t been in the game for years, except to protect my own systems with Laura’shelp.
“I have no idea. I have half our team trying to find the security breach while the rest tries to find and track any transaction confirmations for those particular Bitcoins in the blockchain. Finding out where the money went and tracking it through the block records will help us figure out who tookit.”
“Uh,” John sits forward. “Sorry for being out of my depth, but could someone translate that forme?”
I nod curtly. “Bitcoin have a decentralized database called the blockchain, which records every transaction that a specific Bitcoin goes through. It makes it easier to trace them and harder to duplicatethem.”
That catches his interest. “So, all we have to do is trace who uses themnext?”
“Theoretically,” Laura says honestly enough. “There are ways around the blockchain, and Bitcoin can be converted into other currency. Once that happens, tracking it becomesproblematic.”
“But not impossible,” Johnreplies.
“No,” I reply in that same firm tone. “Absolutely not impossible—not forus.”
Ilookbetween the two of them. “Here’s the deal. I want to know where my money went and who had their hands on it. John, once we find out who is behind this, I trust you to retrieve this person so that he and I can have a littlechat.”
They both nod, and I stand to see them out. “Let’s get itdone.”
Someone is going to pay forthis.
Chapter3
Robin
It’s been three days since I’ve slept. Three days since screams woke me and I came out to see the neighboring building on fire. It was worse than I thought—no sprinkler system and walls full of dry rot. The place went up like atorch.
So now there’s no building tobuy.
My tenants and I were pulling people out of that smoky mess well before the fire department rolled up. I opened up my lobby to give everyone a warm place to gather and wait for ambulances. I put the people with no place to go up in hotels, paying for it with stolen funds from Link’s accountsagain.
Because fuck him—all of this is his fault. Except…except for the part where I could have just given him what he wanted. That choice I made—to make sure he wouldn’t benefit too much from the sale of the building, instead of prioritizing the safety of his tenants—will haunt me for the rest of mylife.
