An Innocent To Tame The Italian. Tara Pammi

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СКАЧАТЬ date of two more months, if Massimo’s calculations were right. The last one had been a CEO who met his brother once every two weeks for six months. Before that, had been a photojournalist studying migration patterns of an exotic bird species in Antarctica who went into hibernation for about ten months out of a year.

      Leo seemed to have the algorithm for the best kind of mistress all figured out—distance, just as ruthless as him and ambitious. All his relationships ended on amicable footings, too.

      It wasn’t that Massimo wanted a cold and clinical relationship like that. He just didn’t have the time or the energy for a deeper one. And he wouldn’t for the next twenty years at least. He doubted he knew what deep, meaningful relationships looked like, anyway. His mother and Silvio—it had been a war. Fought by her, for his sake.

      “You need to do whatever is needed to make her understand,” Leo added. “Do not antagonize her father in the process.”

      Massimo hated when Leonardo was right. “I’ll take care of it.”

      It had been a stupid move tangling with the selfish, spoiled socialite Gisela Fiore. But after the months he’d spent designing his latest product—an e-commerce tool and its subsequent release hitting ten billion in revenue—he’d needed to play. Hard.

      Which Gisela excelled at, according to her reputation. The only thing she excelled at. A torrid two-week affair had ensued. At the end of which, Massimo had been itching to get back to work. As was his reputation.

      Except Gisela was still sending him alarmingly disturbing texts full of threats followed by sobbing messages. When she wasn’t camping outside the Brunetti brothers’ office building.

      “Do you want to hear about the hacker or not?” he challenged Leo.

      “Please.”

      “I found the trail last night. I also figured out how he gained access through the multiple firewalls I built. Both times.”

      “Two times?” Leo asked with cutting focus to the gist of the vast problem on their hands.

       “Sì.”

      “Cristo, you’re a freaking genius, Massimo. How is that even possible?”

      It wasn’t arrogance that made Massimo nod. Computers were his thing. The one thing he was the master of. “The hacker is obviously extremely talented. A true genius, no doubt.”

      Leo’s curse exploded in the basement. A few minutes later, his brother was all business again. “But you have the proof tying it to this person, right?”

      “Sì. I used the bots to piggyback onto the malware he—”

      “Normal people words, Massimo, per favore,” his brother said with a smile, for the millionth time in their lives. “Words a small brain like mine can understand.”

      As always, a spurt of warmth jolted through his veins at Leo’s joke. His brother was no fool. But when Massimo had been at his lowest, Leo, with his words, full of concern and praise, had urged him toward realizing his full potential. “I have proof. I have even triangulated the hacker’s physical location. New York.”

      “That’s fantastic. I can arrange for a meeting with the commissioner in a half hour. He’ll get the cybercrime division involved. We’ll have the hacker behind bars by tonight and the identity of whoever orchestrated this—”

      “No. I don’t want the polizia involved. Not yet.”

      “What? Why the hell not?”

      “I’ve already figured out a cyber club where this hacker plays. I’ve established contact.”

      “Contact with the hacker? Why?”

      Massimo shrugged. He couldn’t exactly put it into words—curiosity, thrill, even a certain amount of camaraderie. The hacker intrigued him. “I want to get to know him. Learn how he operates.”

      “Dios mio, Massimo, he breached our security. Twice.”

      “Essattemente! He could do it again and again. You have to admit that there’s something...fishy about the whole thing. None of the clients’ financials were leaked. I have bots working everywhere they could be sold, like black markets, on the Dark Net. They haven’t surfaced anywhere.

      “It’s as if the hacker is taunting me, playing with me. He’s hard to pin down.”

      “What are you suggesting?”

      “Let me develop a relationship with him. Let me get into his head. When I know how he works, how he’s doing it, I’ll spring the trap.”

      “I want your word that he won’t hit our servers again.”

      “You losing faith in me, Leo?” he taunted, that resentment in him finding voice. Reminding him that Massimo wasn’t still the always sick runt their father went off on whenever he was on one of his frequent alcoholic tirades. That he wasn’t the younger brother running to his older brother’s arms to hide from his father. That he was the computer genius who’d designed products that generated billions in revenue.

      Leo paused at the high-tech sliding doors, frowning.

      “Give me a week and I’ll give you the hacker, his life story and the proof of his illegal activities, all tied up with a bow like a Christmas present.”

      “A week. At the most,” Leo pushed back. “I want him behind bars.”

      One week later

      Massimo stood outside the cyber club exit—a metal door of undistinguishable color at the rear of a dilapidated building in one of the run-down neighborhoods of Brooklyn. A far cry from his penthouse that overlooked Central Park that he’d left behind an hour ago.

      March snow carpeted the parking grounds in the dark alley, thankfully suppressing the odors emanating from the vast trash containers that stood two feet from him.

      The hacker, he’d found, was very much a creature of habit. Unlike Massimo, and much against the popular culture’s rendition of a chaotic, free-spirited genius. Two evenings a week, the hacker came to this club, at exactly eight minutes past nine p.m. and stayed for exactly forty-three minutes. Before going completely off-line.

      Like a junkie allowing himself a very strictly mandated and measured fix.

      Massimo hadn’t found him anywhere else.

      Which meant all Massimo had had were two sessions of forty-three minutes to get to know how the guy operated. And he had. Hackers were a mysterious and antisocial bunch, and yet boastful, too, especially someone at the level at which this particular one operated. All he’d needed to do was compliment him on his modification of a security challenge posed by the master of the club. He hadn’t quite owned up to the breach but the connection had been made.

      His heart fluttering against his rib cage like a caged bird, Massimo tucked his hands into the pockets of his trench coat. Adrenaline hadn’t hit him this hard since the release of his СКАЧАТЬ