"The Hacker and the Mob Boss" ❦
Reyna Fields seems to be an ordinary girl with her thick-framed glasses, baggy clothes, hair always up in a ponytail, and her head tucked away behind a computer screen. However, no one knows she's armed with a genius...
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With that, I pulled away from him so fast that anyone watching us would think he burned me.
"There is a government surveillance camera not too far away from your home. The camera caught the sight of a large, black, heavily-tinted vehicle speeding down the road at the estimated time of Giovanni's disappearance," I explained. "With a bit of photo editing, I believe that I will not only get the license plate, but I may even get a description of the person who took him."
"Surveillance camera?" Saint narrowed his eyes. There was suspicion rising in his voice and speculation bubbling at the surface of his tone.
I nodded my head slowly.
"I made sure to look up and down these streets, search every corner, observe every crevice. There has never been a camera anywhere near my home unless I put it there," he said.
My brows pulled together as I tried to connect the dots he was planting around me. "What are you trying to say?" I wondered out loud.
"I've been given some... advice. It's actually quite genius. If you want to put away a man who is as powerful and as careful as me, what do you do? You send in a woman. A woman that's seemingly innocent and shy. You tell her to manipulate him until he says or does something that could put him away forever. If there are surveillance cameras, they were put there when you got here. Whether it's to monitor you or me... I don't know, but I know it has something to do with you. Isn't that right, Angel?" Saint accused.
I quickly shook my head, the hammering in my chest barely allowing me to hear any of my own thoughts.
Don't be scared. Don't be weak.
"Clearly you just didn't search hard enough," I said softly, my voice barely hovering above a whisper. I cleared my throat to relieve myself of the anxiety squeezing down on my frightened accent. "I already have more than enough incriminating evidence to give you the death penalty. Do you really think I need some stupid camera, Santino? No, I don't. You and I both know I can do much better than surveillance footage. I never asked for this job. If you can't trust me then I guess that leaves you with no other choice... kill me."
He stared at me, waiting for any sign of cowardice. I never bothered to break our gaze. I poured every bit of my determination through the gleams in my eyes. Saint once said he wanted fire, I was ablaze.
"What did I tell you? I trust no one, and that includes you," he said, letting disgust rip from his tongue like a bandaid. Saint reached out to me before I could stop him, his grip squeezing down on either side of my cheeks. Pain seared from his fingertips, forcing a grimace onto my face.
I reached up to pry his fingers away from my face, snatching myself away from him as if it were a game of tug-a-war.
"You do trust me, and that scares you. It's why you won't stop trying to find some reason to hate me. You keep trying to outsmart me, outdo me, and outplay me, but you won't," I found myself saying without thinking. I gulped the moment I finished speaking. The terror that demanded the hairs on my skin to stand was now screaming for my heart to speed up.
