He raises his hand for me to stop.
“I heard you, Tito.”
“It was Stella’s life or—”
“Our sister’s. One of them.”
When he says this, coldly, I realize how awful it truly is, but the entire situation was horrible. There’s no way to explain this because the truth is we made an emotional decision that felt like a far-off scenario, resolvable by the time it was actually a problem. But with Kias dead and the tensions higher than ever, I don’t see an end to it, unless the end is the Russians getting their way.
“Your inventions, are they fool-proof?” Vince’s voice cuts through my thoughts sharply, like a razor knife. He’snotdiscounting my pitch, but I feel too awful to even be excited about it, the ramifications of what Antonio and I did all coming home to roost at once.
“Maybe. Hopefully.” I let out a breath. “I’ll need time and manpower to test them. To make sure.”
“How many people do you need?”
“Are we going to talk about this deal more or…?”
“We’ll deal with it. How many people do you need?
“To?”
“To pitch this for the elders in Italy within a month from the start of the project.”
I raise my brows in shock. I’d hoped Vince might take my ideas into consideration, butthis–
“I–I’ll need the brightest minds in tech, IT, hacking, coding, and constructing tech devices. Whoever we can afford or get. Especially if we only have a month from project start.”
Vince begins writing as I’m talking, nodding along.
“So?”
Vince looks up at my question, and I push forward. “Does this mean you’ll give it a go? My idea, I mean.”
My brother sighs, setting his pen down. “Look, it’s a great idea, and honestly, I think it could work in our favor. For the contract that we have to break and for the New Treaty that needs to move forward with new ways of thinking. That doesn’t mean I’m not fucking pissed at you, Tito, or I’m going to lightly forgive you for what you and Antonio did, either of you. Or that you kept it from me. But itisa potential solution, so yes. We’ll be moving forward.”
“Okay. For what it’s worth–”
“You’re sorry. Tell it to Espie. Or don’t, actually, because I don’t want her to know if we can help it if it can be solved before the deadline.” Vince’s jaw tightens. “Don’t fuck this up, Tito.”
“I won’t,” I tell him quickly. In a way, I’m relieved it was me who spilled the beans, even though I hate being front and center for Vince’s disappointment, even more so than Pops’. If Antonio had been the one to tell him, well, I don’t know. He’d blame it on his issue with authority or his irresponsibility. At least now it’s out in the open and can be resolved.
And my tech is going to come to life. With funds and a team at my disposal. I feel guilty and elated all at once and hopeful that this can work. That I can show my brother that his trust isn’t misplaced.
“You should have everyone you need at your disposal and a location for your work by the end of the week.” Vince crosses something out on his notepad and looks up.
“Thank you, Vince. I won’t let you down.”
—
The following two weeks fly by as I do everything I can to help Vince find the perfect people for my team. They need to be knowledgeable and independent, but take orders well and not ask too many questions. We can’t just let anyone into our family business, after all. This is top-secret, and that feels exciting. This is the culmination of so many of my dreams; I just wish it were for different reasons.
It’s Sunday now, a day before we’re meant to start working on the tech, bringing designs to life. All of my ideas are clearly outlined in a folder on my computer, with very extensive explanations and instructions for each. All we need is the last piece of the puzzle, the leader of the coding and design team. There’s a lot of technical work, and it requires someone who knows just as much as I do to make it work. If we don’t find this person, the entire operation will go far too slowly.
After dinner, I lay in bed, defeated by the challenge as I search through the same website of potentials. My eyes burn, my head hurts, and I have a knot in my throat from the anxiety creeping in. In roughly ten hours, we’ll have a team with one missing link. Just as I’m about to give up and just accept the fact that I’ll have an incomplete team, I get a text from one of our guys. It’s a link to a secured document run through a friend we have in the government.
The picture of the woman is so startling that it distracts me from anything else for a moment.Scout Summers. She’s stunning, with huge doe eyes, thick chocolate curls, and soft umber skin, full lips turned up in a smile for the photo, though it doesn’t quite reach her eyes. She’s flawless, the most beautiful woman I can remember seeing. As I tear my eyes away from her photo and keep reading, I realize it’s not just her features that are stunning.
Intellectually, this woman is a genius. She graduated early from undergrad and her master’s program. From her credentials, it looks like she’s everything we could want and more. She could hack anything with this type of education, build a device from the ground up without needing to check the guides, and take charge of the way it’s done as well as I can. She would be the perfect extension of me, able to help the team and pull more than her own weight.