My Stepbrother's Dirty Little Secret novel Chapter 461

Chapter 461

Raphael

The glowing green and white code on the four massive monitors burned into my retinas, but none of it was making sense anymore.

It was two in the morning. My fingers smashed against the keyboard, the loud, aggressive clack-clack-clack echoing off the walls of the basement, but I was just spinning my wheels.

I couldn’t concentrate. My mind was completely fried, fucking good for nothing therapist.

With a loud curse, I struck the desk with my fist, making my cold cup of coffee jump. I forced myself to look back at the lines of data.

I was in the middle of a massive routing skim, hijacking a hidden digital pipeline between two major offshore banks in the Cayman Islands. By bouncing the encryption keys through six different dummy servers in countries that didn’t have extradition laws, I was pulling fractions of a cent off millions of dark-money transactions.

By the time the sun came up, the Capone accounts would be thirty million dollars heavier, and the banks wouldn’t even notice the leak for another fiscal quarter.

It was a beautiful, high-stakes heist, the kind of job that usually gave me a rush. But tonight, I just wanted to smash the screens with a hammer.

Suddenly, the metal door at the top of the basement stairs groaned open. I didn’t even bother looking up from my screens. I knew that arrogant stride anywhere.

“I’m working, Adriano,” I snapped, my fingers flying across the keys again, trying to lock down a rogue firewall, ” Get the fuck out unless the house is burning down.”

“Oh, the house isn’t burning, little brother,” Adriano’s deep voice boomed through the room, “But your brain definitely is. I can smell the smoke from upstairs. You’ve been working for thirty-six hours straight.”

A wave of intense, visceral disgust hit my stomach so hard I felt sick. The very thought of touching a woman, of being near one, made my skin crawl with a burning irritation.

“Get them out of here,” I spat, turning my back on them and facing my monitors again, “Now. Before I delete our entire routing protocol and blame it on you.”

“Oh, come on!” Adriano groaned loudly, stepping closer and slapping his hand onto the back of my chair, forcing me to spin back around to face the lineup, “Look at them! Pick one that’s your type.”

“I don’t have a type because I don’t want any of them…” I said through clenched teeth, my temper finally snapped. I stood up from my chair, towering as much as I could, “I am in the middle of routing thirty million dollars through the Caymans. If my timing is off by three seconds, the federal watchdogs will catch the spike. And you walk down here with a synchronized swimming team?”

“They are blindfolded, you idiot! They can’t see your precious numbers!” Adriano snapped back, “I am trying to help you! A good, solid hour of recreational sin will clear your head. It’s medical science!”

“It’s not medical science,” I answered, pointing a furious finger toward the stairs, “I don’t want to get laid, Adriano! The thought of a woman touching me right now makes me want to peel my own fucking skin off! Get your bikini squad out of my basement.”