Exquisite

Shotgun

~Neith~

I practically stormed into my room, Vivienne's fingers flying across the keyboard as she shrieked at me.

"It worked! Red, it fucking worked! You did it, you goddamned genius."

I took a seat next to her, my eyes glued to the screens that covered the entire wall and the glowing letters that flashed across them periodically. "Are you sure they bought it?" I asked her without taking my eyes off the display. It all looked fine, nothing to indicate that we'd been caught.

"One hundred percent. I checked our firewall twice for any attempt at entry, but it's all clear. They can't know the source of the code unless they worm their way in and they haven't even tried, so they definitely don't suspect anything." 

I nodded, exhaling in relief. From the corner of my eye, I could see both of her brothers staring at her with their jaws hanging open and despite the crisis, I couldn't fight a grin.

Viv had absorbed everything I taught her in a remarkably short time and had been a more useful assistant than I could even dream of.

"Can someone please dumb it down for us? What's going on?" Cassien said slowly, still visibly shocked at Vivienne's easy command over coding jargon.

Hopefully, it would make him realize how brilliant his sister actually is and how he's wasting all that immense potential by stubbornly keeping her away from this line of work.

"So basically Neith had set up booby traps of sorts - to figure out who bought those special bullets? They're made from a very rare alloy, as she had told you already."

Vivienne's words spilled into each other in an attempt to get them out fast enough. "It was bait for our asshole. She had posed as the seller and asked for payment from multiple people who had conducted arms deals in the last five months."

"Isn't that very ..." Cassien asked, careful not to offend me. "Uhm, basic? Who would fall for that?"

"Noob has entered the chat." Vivienne snorted. "Tell them, Red."

"I used the exact encryption that only the most elite arm dealers of Russia use. I knew it because I studied it when I was working with Father; it's supposed to be impregnable unless you have the key. I had worked on its code for months and was very close to cracking it when the shooting happened, but I finally did it ten days ago."

Viv nodded furiously. "Most gangs she mailed stated quite verbosely that no such deal happened, but only one responded with a very eloquent threat. LOOK AT IT, LOOK AT THEIR MESSAGE."

Viv almost slammed her palm on the screen as the words slowly changed from a scramble of numbers and symbols to legible words.

'The payment was delivered as per your instructions. Your greed for extra money might just make us visit you." 

"But who is it?" Cassien's eyes were on me as he asked it, his jaw set. "Give me a name, Neith."

Even though we were all safe now, he hadn't forgotten what had happened that night. I knew it because even though he never asked me how close I was to finding the culprit, I had seen him standing in front of my workstation for hours when he thought I was asleep.

My palms felt icy cold as I rubbed them together, cross-checking the code. "Well, isn't this neat?" I murmured, wanting to be as sure as I possibly could before telling them. 

It made sense, though. I knew this man, and I knew how far he could go to get what he wanted.

"It's him, Cassien." I turned in my chair, meeting the purple fire flaring in his eyes. "It's Marquis."