Reign (Riders of Apollo #1)

Chapter 45: Peyton Lennox

Looks like Roman and I are going to be more than just a couple, we're going to be sent on runs together. We have the same title and I am fucking proud to have earned it, I mean I never thought I'd have a family let alone one like this.

Romeo pulls me away from Lexie after I've handed her my jacket and we set up in his office. I draw up a grid on the wall which he painted with chalk paint and I write down each account so that we can tick off the ones we've done and make sure that Bear can easily understand what we're doing. 

I left off all the technical speak just for that reason.

"I wanna do the offshore accounts." Romeo tells me and I agree that that's a good idea, I can fuck with domestic ones it's just a little harder because American security is a lot harder than others. I head over to his computer set up and roll in another chair, he uses the monitors on the left and I use the ones on the right. "Lollipop?" I take it from him and stick it in my mouth as I start tapping away.

"This one is under Twitch, so I'm thinking we leave those ones until last because we don't know which one he'll be using day to day and we want to shut down as many as possible before they realise what we're doing." Romeo nods in agreement and categorises his accounts by name and amount of money, I do the same ordering it from the highest amount to the lowest. It looks like the first account I shut down was the one with the most money because the most I've got here is one mil. "I've only got one mil here, biggest number on yours?"

"Seven mil, they're running low." I click away, completely agitated by the firewalls that keep popping up. "Can you pull this up on your computer? I'm not entirely sure what this means." Romeo asks, sending it my way.  I pull it across and study the code, it's a failed trojan by the looks of things but why would HR try and hack their own bank accounts?

"Romeo which bank are we with?" I ask, typing quickly. He tells me and looks at me with concern, I link the code back to the website but sigh in relief when our numbers remain high. "They tried to hack our account but failed, I can trace the IP address and see what we're looking at."

It takes me a few hours because of all the encryption and Romeo is able to knock out three bank accounts. The first one was transferred to the Niners, the second to Matías and the third to a homeless charity in town. "Homelessness close to the heart?" I ask him as I take another sip of energy drink, trying to speed up the process I'm putting myself through.

"I got kicked out of my house when I was fifteen, lived on the street for three years until the Riders found me." I nod in understanding before pushing through the final wall with a sigh of relief. I rub my eyes in agitation and notice that my hands are shaking, looks like I need to cut back on the caffeine. I don't want to give myself a premature heart attack.

"I've tracked it back to a warehouse in the mountains, it seems closed off but the power seems to be getting used up there. Maybe it's a stronghold?"

"Could be a storage warehouse, seems too cold to house people."

"I suppose we'll check that out in the future, right now we need to finish cracking down on these accounts. I've heard angry bears kill and I'm not ready to die quite yet."

"Yes ma'am." Romeo chuckles and turns back to his computer, his smirk still in place. I can see the mischief in him and can understand why his ass ends up in jail so often. He's incredibly smart and I think sometimes he gets bored, that's why he does stupid stuff, I do it too. One of these days he's gonna get him someone that keeps him on his toes, distracted enough so he doesn't get killed in a bar fight or something.

Though right now I suppose he's too young, too immature. We'll see what happens.

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"Baby, come on. You've been in here for hours, let's go home." Roman appears at the door with soft words and coaxing arms. I'm still shaking from my caffeine and sugar rush but finally notice Romeo who has passed out in the seat next to me.

I reach out to Roman who helps me out of my seat while I struggle to operate properly. "I think - I think I might have consumed a lot - a lot of energy drinks which probably wasn't a good idea at all." My voice is relatively high pitched and I'm talking faster than usual, next time I am on a limit of two rather than seven. "Did you get your name? When are you gonna go and get him?"

"I already did, grabbed him outside a minimart. Sergeant Rodrigo has been given a cell with the Mexicans."

"Oooh! You're hot when you get your job done. I should probably see Lucia soon but I don't know whether she's back from Bora Bora yet. Did you see her? Or Matías? Wherever he is she's not too far behind." I look up at him expectantly as he helps me into my car.

"I didn't see them but you can call them in the morning and find out."

"I'm probably not gonna sleep tonight so maybe I should look over some files or or or carry on hacking things. Ooh! Maybe I should go to an underground fight, I haven't been to one of those in ages. This one time I fought someone bigger than Boulder, that guy is fucking massive by the way, and laid his ass out. I made a good three hundred thousand on that one, you should come!"

"You're not going to a street fight, sweetheart. By the looks of things, I'm not letting you out of my sight."

"That's not fair. You have to sleep, honey. You haven't consumed an excessive amount of energy drinks that I'm definitely gonna regret when I crash."

"We can make a night out of it, what do you fancy doing?" I take his hand excitedly and squeeze it, waiting for him to decide where we're going to spend the night.