The Cyber Twins novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Toast
At a dinner for forty, Ottavio toasts the Cyber Twins, Nico tells Wynne she would be bored by the code she just asked about, Jillian repeats Wynne's own fix as hers, and Ottavio puts a price on the Ghost; at home a message opens in Wynne's private door: Jillian knows.
Nico's father, the don, stood at the head of his table, in front of forty guests, and raised his glass to the Cyber Twins.
"To my son, who keeps every thief out of this house," he said. "And to Jillian, who walks into anyone else's."
The whole room clapped.
Nico smiled at his father and squeezed my knee under the tablecloth.
Jillian blew a kiss down the table, and I blew one back.
She had been my best friend for eight years.
Nico had been my boyfriend for fourteen months.
Between them they were the most famous hackers the Sabatini family had ever owned.
I was the girlfriend who sat in the middle and passed the bread.
Everyone told me how lucky I was to stand beside them.
I waited for the clapping to stop.
"Nico, how did you close the hole in the dock manifests?" I asked. "The one from Tuesday."
Nico turned to me and spoke gently.
"Wynne, baby, you wouldn't follow it. It's a lot of code. Eat your veal."
Two men at the end of the table laughed.
"I might follow some of it," I said.
"You'd be bored in a minute." He kissed my temple. "Let the twins have their shop talk."
My face went hot.
Jillian reached across the table and took my hand.
"Don't be mad at him," she said. "He's exhausted. Honestly, the fix was nothing. I just put a seven second delay on the login and let it choke."
That was my fix.
I had typed it at two in the morning on Wednesday, in my bathrobe, on a laptop Nico thought only played music.
I looked at Jillian.
She smiled at me, so warm and sure that I almost thought I had imagined it.
"I'll walk you through all of it Sunday," she said. "Promise. Pour yourself some wine, Wynnie."
She topped off my glass herself.
Ottavio Sabatini tapped his fork against his plate, and the room went quiet.
"One more matter, since all my people are here."
He set his glass down.
"For a year, someone has been walking through my wires. They don't steal. They don't sell. They fix my holes and leave without a word."
Forty people stopped chewing.
"I don't care how polite a thief is. Half a million dollars to whoever gives me a name."
He looked slowly down the table.
"And you all know the rule of this house. Whoever gets inside our wires does not leave the house."
Nobody said a word.
Nico stood up and buttoned his jacket.
"Papà, I'll bring the Ghost to this table myself," he said. "I've been on this since the first night."
My hand was flat on the tablecloth.
I made it stay flat.
"Wynne?" Gia leaned over from my other side, with her gold hoops swinging. "You're white as a sheet. Are you okay?"
"The veal's rich," I said.
"Right," said Gia. She looked at my hand, then at my face, then she let it go and refilled my water.
Jillian laughed at something a guest said and raised her glass to me again.
Nico sat back down and kissed my hair.
He smelled like cedar and cigarette smoke from the terrace, and I loved him.
That was the problem.
He had said the word useless in front of forty people without saying it at all.
I looked at the family whose holes I had been patching in secret for a year.
I looked at the man who had just promised to hand me to his father.
So I stopped passing the bread.
Nobody noticed. They were all toasting the twins again.
Back at the penthouse, Nico loosened his tie in the hall and kissed me once, quickly.
"Go to bed, baby. I need to work."
"On what?"
"A conversation. A stranger I've been arguing with for months." He rubbed his eyes. "You wouldn't follow it. It's all brackets and packet traces. Get some sleep."
He went into his study and shut the door.
I got into bed and pulled the old laptop out from under the mattress, the one with the cracked corner and the peeling sticker.
I had told him it was for music.
I put in my earbuds, so that he would see them if he looked in, and opened the black window I had been living in for a year.
At 2:41 a.m., through the wall, I heard him laugh softly at his own screen.
Three lines appeared in my window.
*You left a seven second delay on the login again. Cute. It won't stop me finding you.*
I typed back with my thumbs shaking.
*Go to sleep, Nico.*
His chair scraped in the next room.
Then a second window opened on my screen, one I had never opened myself.
It was inside my private door, the one nobody on earth should have been able to find.
*Hi, Wynne. Please don't close this. Let's talk before Nico does.*
The name on it was Jillian's.
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