Chapter Twenty-Two

Ciska

O ceanShore Coal Company , Indiana Harbor, East-Chicago...

Ciska's eyelids felt as heavy as lead curtains when they started to flutter open. Her mind swam through a murky haze as fragments of consciousness bobbed to the surface like debris after a shipwreck.

"Why is my brain covered in cobwebs?" she mumbled in a raspy whisper. The question seemed to come from far off as she struggled to shake off the comatic effects that seemed to drag her body through the bed into a puddle on the floor. "Fiddlesticks! Why aren't any of my limbs working?"

Her inner voice chimed in, clearer than her spoken words. Come on, Ciska. Pull yourself together. You've been in worse situations... Remember prison?

"As if I can ever forget," she muttered as, with Herculean effort, she managed to prop herself up on her elbows. The room spun like a carnival ride. "Ugh, I hate this," she moaned and squeezed her eyes shut as she willed the vertigo to subside.

"Okay, step one... sit up slowly," she coached herself. "You can do this. It's just like those scenes after Jax's infamous energy drink experiments... only worse." Visions of Jax's tender aftercare flashed through her mind. "Don't think about him. Just don't!" She knew if she did, she'd burst into tears. The current situation she found herself in wasn't conducive to the happy future they were talking about the night before.

"Was it even last night? I have no idea where I am or how long I've been out."

Slowly, painfully, Ciska maneuvered herself into a sitting position. She blinked rapidly as she tried to bring the room into focus. A chill ran down her spine as her vision cleared.

"Gray. I freaking hate gray walls!" Like the prison, everything was gray. The walls were painted a dull, lifeless shade that seemed to close in on her. A large window dominated one wall, but any hope of escape was quashed by the thick steel bars crisscrossing its surface.

"Well, this is... cozy," she muttered sarcastically as her gaze swept the room.

The bed was an anomaly in the dreary space— plush and inviting, with fluffy pillows and a peach-colored comforter that seemed out of place in what was clearly intended as a prison. Through an open doorway was a bathroom and toilet. In one corner, an equipped kitchenette seemed as out of place as the heavenly bed. Across the room, a large and fully set up workstation caught her eye. Four monitors stood sentinel with their blank screens reflecting the barren walls. Three keyboards lay in perfect alignment as if their keys were eagerly waiting to unearth the kind of work she swore she would never do again.

"Fucking hell," Ciska cursed, realizing what it meant as her mind cleared. Fragmented memories of the previous night crashed over her like a tidal wave— running through the brush with her heart pounding and the acrid taste of fear in her mouth. She cringed as she recalled stumbling over a root and the flash of Cobra's cruel smile, then pain, followed by... nothing.

A cold sweat broke out on her forehead. "Oh, crud," she whispered. "This is bad. This is very, very bad."

The sudden sound of a key turning in the lock sent her pulse racing. She tensed and held her breath as she braced herself for the man she had no doubt she was about to face.

Theo Gulliver. Bastard extraordinaire and evidently even more of a criminal than she ever realized.

Wake up and smell the pig shit, Ciska. He's a mafioso. He is and always has been a criminal.

Yeah... I guess I've been naive to believe he would never hurt me.

You guessed wrong. He follows orders, girlie. And you were only one of them... even back then.

The door swung open with an ominous creak, which ended her inner debate. Her voice trembled with fury as her eyes clashed with a man she once thought she loved.

"I knew you were behind this. You're a bastard, Theo, and a coward for sending that Goliath after me. I guess I always knew that. I just never thought you'd lie to me."

"Come now, no need to insult the poor man," a voice grated as the one man she feared more than Cobra walked into the room. "You should apologize, for that matter, since he had nothing to do with you being here. In fact, it was because of his incompetence that I had to send Cobra since he failed me." He turned a glacial look at Theo. "It seems this little bitch is your Achilles heel. One that's going to cost you dearly if you don't shake it off quickly."

"I already did. She means nothing to me. My intention was purely to make an easier transition in obtaining her cooperation first."

"As I said," Ciska interjected. "A full-fledged coward."

"Ah, so refreshing to have such a fiery waif among us," Carlisi smirked as he tapped her under the chin. "Welcome back, my little IT fairy."

"I'm not your little anything." Hatred flashed in her eyes as she slapped his hand away. "Why am I here?"

"Come now, Ms. Fowler," Carlisi scoffed. "Surely a woman as clever as you know better than to ask such a stupid question, especially since you screwed me over... in more ways than one." He cackled a laugh as she grew even paler. "Yes, you know what I'm talking about, I see." He studied his nails momentarily before pinning her down with a cold stare. "The question you should be asking is why I allowed you to stay alive in prison... after the instruction to kill you was ignored and you got arrested instead."

Ciska didn't have to ask the question; she already knew the answer. Apart from deleting the secret program she had been designing, she had also destroyed the service interceptor hacker scheme and cleared the entire database linked to it. One that she had designed just after meeting Theo and didn't realize what it was intended for.

Stop lying, Ciska. You preferred to turn a blind eye.

She couldn't deny the truth of the berate from her mind. She had known its potential, its power to ruin lives. Images flashed through her mind— elderly couples losing their life savings and families torn apart by debt when their bank accounts were cleared. All because of what she had built.

I was so blind , she berated herself. So desperate to be loved that I ignored the consequences.

The memory of Theo's praise and his false affection made her stomach churn. At twenty-two, starved for any scrap of love, she had fallen hard and fast. She had convinced herself that the end justified the means, and the warmth of Theo's approval was worth the price others paid.

Now, for the second time, just like in prison, the repercussions of her choices crashed down on her as she once again realized just how far she had fallen to be the recipient of that long-desired emotion... to feel loved.

The guilt she had run from once released and the lives she had helped destroy— it all caught up to her in this gray, suffocating room.

"You've been a very naughty girl, Ciska," Carlisi growled as he loomed over her. "Did you really think you could just walk away from us?"

Ciska met his gaze, her voice steadier than she felt. "I didn't walk away from anyone. I served my time for the crimes I committed. You never owned me, Carlisi. You never will."

"Still so innocent in what became your reality the first day you accepted money for a job from me," Carlisi spat with lips curled into a menacing smile. "I don't pay for a job well done. I pay for loyalty and a lifetime commitment to the Group. There's no walking away from us. Never."

Ciska felt her entire world threatening to crumble around her. Locked inside a concrete cage with steel bars on the windows and a heavy steel door, she knew there was no escape for her. If she didn't conform and become one of them, she had no doubt she was going to spend the rest of her living years locked behind these walls.

The future she had dreamed about with Jax withered away slowly as tears burned behind her eyes. She should've known better. There were no second chances for someone as corrupt as she had been all those years ago. Paying her dues in prison meant nothing. This, right here and now, was her punishment. She had learned what it meant to have true friends, to be part of a team that stood together, no matter what. Most of all, she had found real love... That hurt the most. That she would only have memories of Jax and their short time together to last her a lifetime.

"You know what I want, Ms. Fowler. I have a highly qualified team of hackers on standby at your disposal. Your first step is to check the framework they designed from the notes I had when we discussed the program. Then you will finish what you started ten years ago." His voice dripped with venom. "Be warned, I'll have every step you take verified and tests run by the team. Fuck up, and you'll pay the price." He laughed at her expression. "Oh, I'm not going to kill you. You're too valuable for that. No, I will give you to Cobra. He's got a certain... venomous touch where women are concerned. Believe me... you don't want to find out what it is."

He sauntered to the door with an expression of self-satisfaction burned on his face.

"Oh." He stopped at the door. "We reinstated a similar service interception program eight years ago. It works, but it's not as effective as yours was. Fix it for me, won't you, darling?"

"Fuck off, Carlisi. I'm not your goddamn darling."

His booming laughter chased after him as he left, with Cobra trailing after him.

"Get the fuck out," Ciska sneered at Theo, who stood watching her. "You're the last motherfucker I ever want to see again."

"Do what he wants, Ciska. Believe me, the alternative... you won't survive."

"Good, because believe you me, you useless shithead, this isn't the life I want to live."

"If only it was as easy as that. Cobra is a master at inducing and managing pain... especially in women. In the end, you'll beg to die, but you won't because as Carlisi said, you're too valuable alive... or rather, your skills are."

"Get. The. Fuck. Out." The sneer sounded like it came from a woman possessed. Trembling, Ciska curled into a ball on the bed as the door closed behind him. "I'm so totally fucked."

Well, since you're cursing like a sailor testing the word fuck as his only vocabulary, I'd say you are.

"Not cursing is the last of my worries now."

Granted, but I have faith in you. You're a brilliant software developer and an even better hacker. You can write code better than most. Best of all, you can hide algorithms inside a sequence the best hackers won't identify. You can do this.

"Not alone, I can't."

Then, do what you do best. Hack, girl, and find a way to reach someone you can trust out there.

Ciska jumped upright at the speed of a jack in the box. A red light in one corner caught her eye.

"What the hell?" It was gone and was probably her imagination. She stared intently at the corner until, eventually, the tiny black circle came into focus. "Bastards have CCTV footage in here," she muttered without moving her lips, "which probably means they have all the monitors set to view access, too. Well, fuck ‘em. I'm not a rookie. I'll show them, and you're right. I can do it... find someone out there... but who?"

Searching her brain, she discarded one after the other names that came to mind until, eventually, she locked onto one. A broad smile split across her face.

Pretending to yawn, she mumbled behind her hand in case they were reading her lips.

"Perfect. Jax told me he's an IT mogul, which means he has to be as good as me... probably even better. He'll be able to decipher an encrypted deep web message."