The Hacker

Chapter 1-1

1

Dima

There you are, beautiful.

Hacking and cyberstalking isn’t just a job, it’s a way of life. Sitting behind my screen in the penthouse I share with my bratva brothers, I rule the cyberworld. Right now, I’m watching the live security cam feed on our building to glimpse the slender female figure enter the front door and walk to the elevator.

I sprout a semi just seeing her unassuming yet somehow sensual walk and the absent smile that tugs at her lips, like she’s thinking of something that makes her happy.

“Who are you spying on?” Nikolai asks from the couch.

Fucker. My twin knows exactly who I’m stalking, and his awareness is becoming more and more of a thorn in my side.

“Ooh, is it a woman?” our roommate, Sasha, calls from the kitchen, then sprints through the living room to look over my shoulder.

Case in point.

I click away before she can see anything, sending both her and Nikolai a glare.

Wrong move. My out-of-character response showed my hand. I should’ve played it casual.

Sasha gasps theatrically—always the thespian. ”It is a woman! Who? Let me see.” She tries to snatch at my mouse.

“It’s your mother,” I say then instantly regret it because Sasha’s broad smile wobbles and falls. Her greedy mother was involved in a scheme to steal Sasha’s inheritance and isn’t well-liked around here.

“Wait, really?”

“No. Bad joke. Sorry.”

“What the f**k?” Maxim snaps from the kitchen. He doesn’t appreciate anyone offending his new bride, which is understandable.

“Sorry.” I hold the mouse in the air, out of her reach, but she’s still trying to grab it. “Tell your wife not to touch my equipment.”

Sasha giggle-snorts.

“That came out wrong. Just move away.” I make a shooing motion.

Sasha folds her arms over her chest. “You have to show us now. There’s no way I’m backing off until we see.”

Knowing there’s nothing to see by now—my quarry will be safely in the elevator by now, I set the mouse down. “Fine. This is what I was watching.” I click back on the feed, which shows the screen of the front lobby of our building, Maykl sitting behind the desk, less doorman than our heavily armed sentry.

Cyberstalking is my entertainment, my window to the world, my identity. With a keyboard and screen, I’m god. I consider my view of all data a right I earned by knowing how to access it.

Everyone’s business is my business because it’s all there for me to see. I can find every scrap of data about them. I can reshuffle it, rearrange it to change their lives with a few strokes of my keys. I can get them in trouble with the IRS, I can wipe their police records clean. I can change their credit score, steal their identity.

“Kuznets wants your help with a hacking project,” my boss, Ravil, mentions as he passes through the living room. “I gave him your number. He’s going to have Sergei Litvin call you from Moscow.”

“Okay.”

I hoped Ravil’s interruption would distract Sasha, but she’s still after me. “So it’s someone in the building?” she demands. “Who?”

“Who indeed?” Nikolai murmurs, a sardonic edge to his voice.

This time, I’m smart and ignore him.

Sasha whirls to pin Nikolai with her gaze. “Is it a woman?” She gives an Oscar-worthy gasp. “Is it Natasha?”

“Is it?” Nikolai asks blandly, shifting his gaze to me.

“Why would I stalk Natasha?” I scoff but even saying her name out loud does something to me.

Because I’m always stalking the very lovely Natasha Zolotova, the sexy-as-hell, jail-bait daughter of one of the residents in our building who gives me a hard-on simply by existing. She’s not actually jail-bait. She’s twenty-three—about the same age as Sasha. But she has this fresh-faced sweetness that makes her seem like she could be eighteen. She’s the proverbial girl next door. She brings cheer to the entire building.

Of course, I already know everything there is to know about her. I keep tabs on everyone in the building as part of my job for Ravil, the bratva boss who provides my twin brother and I a very comfortable life within the confines of the brotherhood.

But stalking Natasha is a daily activity for me, along with washing my face and brushing my teeth. Out of respect, I don’t read her emails or listen to her calls. I just like to check her i********: photos. Watch the video feed from our building’s security cameras showing her coming in and out. I like to know what she’s wearing. Her mood. That she’s safe. I like to know how often she works—not enough to move out of her mother’s apartment or be able to support herself, as far as I can tell.

Today she’s in a melon-colored halter top over yoga pants, a fact I will verify in person in a few moments. I watch as she enters the apartment she shares with her mom, then comes back out, rolling her massage table to the elevator.

I close my laptop and stand.

“You have somewhere to be?” Nikolai asks.

I am seriously going to kill the guy. I flip him the bird as I walk out of the penthouse suite, around the elevator to where I have a single bedroom that opens to the hallway, hotel room style.

My d**k gets hard knowing Natasha will be getting off that elevator and knocking at my door in just a minute, her beautiful face doing crazy things to my resolve. I step inside my room and lean my forehead against the door.

The elevator dings. I try to get my thoughts out of the gutter.

I hate that she’s a mobile massage therapist—she brings her table to other people’s houses. It’s dangerous as hell. She told me she doesn’t see anyone she doesn’t know personally or who hasn’t been personally recommended, and she also told me she doesn’t see men, but I know that’s bullshit, since she’s given me two massages and will be up here shortly to give me another.

I made her promise if anyone ever messed with her she’d tell me. I may not be huge and able to snap necks with one hand like Oleg, our enforcer, but I’d damn well be lethal if anyone hurt that girl.

Not that she’s mine to protect. As much as I enjoy stalking Natasha, that’s all I will do.

Booking the massages—that was a mistake. A huge one.

It was Nikolai’s fault. My asshole twin must’ve noted my, er, dedication to keeping tabs on her, so he threatened to book a massage, himself, if I wouldn’t. And there was no way I’d let Nikolai be n***d in the same room as Natasha.

No f*****g way.

So now I have to suffer through me being n***d in the same room as Natasha and having those sweet hands touch me everywhere—well, almost everywhere—and not have my d**k in my fist. Gospodi, I’m harder than marble the entire hour, and it’s the worst kind of t*****e. Especially when she flirts with me.

I’m not usually the guy women are attracted to. Nikolai gets them with his charm and general air of danger. Pavel, Ravil, Oleg, and Maxim—the other guys in our bratva cell—they all have women throwing panties their way—or at least they did before they claimed their current partners.

Me, though?

I’m the computer geek. The hacker.

I’m not charming because I don’t even try. I’m the guy behind the curtain, manipulating the scenes from a computer screen.

But for some reason, Natasha seems to like me. Maybe she can sense my attraction to her—women are intuitive that way. She looks up at me with big sea green eyes like I’m someone worth having, and it shreds me from the inside.

Because I’m not.

I’m definitely not worth having.

And more than that, I’m not available.