Hacking my Stalker (Dearly Devoted Book 4), page 1
Hacking my Stalker
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Dearly Devoted Series
Cassi Hart
Published by: Cheeky Publishing LLC
First Edition
Copyright © 2023 Cassi Hart– All rights Reserved
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the copyright owner. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication / use of the trademarks is not authorized, associated with or sponsored by the trademark owners. For any permission requests email cassi@cassihartromance.com
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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Dedicated to my computer’s anti-virus, may you stay strong and protect me from the hackers out there. Thank you for your support, enjoy!
WARNING: Dark themes, Age gap, safe stalking, extra OTT possessive hero.
Contents:
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Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Epilogue
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Prologue
Bishop
“We found him!”
I slam the brakes on the Bentley too hard and narrowly avoid crashing into the car right in front of me. My head swims as my best friend’s words come through the car speakers, and I clench my teeth as irritation bleeds in.
“What did you say?”
“The hacker, we found him,” he says, the excitement in his voice a clear contrast to the emotions running through me.
It has been a while since I’ve felt anything other than mild boredom. The quick rush of blood in my veins and the loud thump in my head is a welcome feeling.
While there’s never a dull moment in the security service industry, after being at it for almost two decades, rarely anything moves me anymore. As someone who’s seen it all and has met all kinds of people, I’ve developed a tough shell to the point where I don’t even need to pretend not to feel, because the fact is, I’ve stopped feeling. Mostly.
These last couple of days have been the most interesting I’ve had in a while. Every now and then, someone tries to hack into my company, but they never get far. I have a team of well-paid cybersecurity experts who ensure that doesn’t happen. This time was different.
This hacker got too far.
He snuck past some security features that no one has ever bypassed, and I want to see with my own eyes the person audacious enough to try and mess with my company.
I’ve ruined men for much less.
“Send me the location,” I demand, drumming my fingers over the steering wheel.
“I can send a team to scope it out first, make sure this isn’t a fake IP address designed to throw us off,” James says, the dull sound of a rock ballad breaking through the speaker. “Besides, aren’t you supposed to be meeting the ambassador for lunch?”
“I have time to spare. I want to handle this personally. Send me the location now.”
The silence at the end of the line is telling. I don’t have time to spare, and he knows it. Few people would dare defy a direct order from me, and James is one of them. Perhaps the only one. After being raised as brothers for years, although we are not related by blood, he was the only one I could depend on when my grandfather died and his enemies tried to take advantage of his young heir, assuming I didn’t have what it took to hold onto his crumbling empire. With James at my side, I quickly proved them wrong. Now, soon after I take the early retirement I’ve been working toward, he will take over the company from me.
But before that, I need to take care of this small issue. It doesn’t seem to matter that I don’t have the time I’ve assured my best friend I do. I will catch this little hacker and remind them why I’m not to be messed with if it’s the last thing I do before my retirement.
“All right, fine,” he says with a heavy sigh. “I’m sending you the address, but, Bishop, don’t do anything stupid.”
I let the silence speak for itself, and he sighs a moment before my phone lights up with a message.
“This is a . . .”
“A college, yes,” he confirms. “I told you that it might be a fake address to throw us off and probably not worth the time.”
“I’ll be the judge of that,” I reply, taking the next exit and heading in the opposite direction of my lunch reservation.
Fifteen years ago, I would have jumped at the opportunity of having lunch with someone as powerful as the ambassador, but not anymore. At eighteen, I had nothing but a debt-riddled company that the Mafia was trying to steal from me. They tried everything—short of killing me—to gain access to the company my grandfather left me, but I wouldn’t let them. I was willing to fight to the death to protect it. I made Stone Guards Security mine and reinvented it into what it is today and made more money than I know what to do with, but it’s the power I’d wanted the most.
I’d wanted to become the most powerful man in West Valley. I’d wanted to be feared by criminals and politicians alike. And I am. My name alone is enough to strike fear in the most influential people in this city. These days, people like the ambassador come crawling to me, not the other way around.
Now some college punk thinks they can mess with me?
I take the tree-lined road that leads to the small, private campus, and I am not surprised when I am stopped at the iron gates. I show my ID, and one look at it is enough to get me through. But I pay little attention to the nervous guard, my mind is on the hacker and what I am going to do when I catch them.
I need to find him, I think as I pull up in front of a small vintage-style coffee shop.
I exit the car, slip my hands into my slacks and walk toward the door. I stop to scan the people seated outside with their eyes locked on their phones, but no one stands out. Part of me doesn’t actually believe the hacker is here, and typically, I would let my guys handle it, but something about this feels different, personal.
I reach for the door and am about to push it open when I catch a glimpse of something out of the corner of my eye and stop.
Everything around me disappears, and I am left standing in awe, my heart hammering in my chest unlike anything I have ever felt before. I’d thought, after years of fighting and bloodshed, I’d been robbed of the ability to feel, and yet, here I stand, the sound of my heart beating harshly in my ears. It’s so loud, I am surprised no one else can hear it.
I stand frozen to the ground and stare through the glass door at the most beautiful little thing I’ve ever seen.
Long, fiery red hair tied in a messy bun at the top of her head, clear-rimmed glasses perched on a small nose, and one leg is curled beneath . . . her.
The most perfect woman I have ever seen. Christ, is it even possible for someone to rob you of your breath?
And yet, that is what’s happening.
Her head tilts back, and her lips part in a soundless laugh, and something flickers in my chest, sucking all the breath from my lungs. Jealously clogs up my throat at the thought of someone else drawing that reaction from her.
Fuck, I don’t know her name. Hell, I only just saw her, and yet, with my eyes fixed on her through the glass, I want that smile directed at me. I want to read it in her eyes. I want to be the one—
“Excuse me, mister. Do you mind?”
I turn around in irritation at the disruption, only to notice that I am blocking the entrance. I move aside and step to the window instead, my eyes seeking her hungrily. I know I look like a creep standing by the window and watching the girl, but I can’t help myself.
I can’t move to save my life. I don’t even remember what I came here to do in the first place. Surely it was to meet her, right? I can’t piece my thoughts together long enough to make sense of anything.
I want to walk in there, toward the center of my fascination, just to see the color of her eyes, to learn what she smells like . . . but I am as hard as a rock. One look at me and my raging erection, and she’ll think I am a creep.
I break out of my trance when she slaps her laptop closed and waves goodbye to the other girl at her table, who I’ve only just noticed was sitting across from her. I watch as she collects her things and drops them into a backpack with a butterfly drawn on the front before getting up to leave. She makes her way across the coffee shop and toward the door. Toward me.
I want her.
That much is obvious as she slips through the door and I catch a glimpse of her moss-green eyes and the little freckles on her nose.
I want her. I want to
The vibration in my pocket is a rude reminder of my responsibilities, but there is no way I am leaving my little butterfly to disappear in a field as big as this one.
Mine.
This little girl is mine!
Chapter One
Hazel
One Month Later
The violent shaking of the bed forces me out of a deep slumber and a dream of me and a faceless man riding a horse through a field of dandelions. We are just about to kiss when I am snapped back into reality.
“Hazel, wake up! You missed the alarm.”
I flinch at the noise from my roommate’s posh British accent and sit up on the bed, too disoriented to make sense of what’s happening.
“Too loud, Heather,” I moan, trying to curl under the covers again, but she grabs my foot and drags me out of bed, nearly breaking my back in the process.
“I can’t believe we have to do this every morning. I told you not to spend all night on that computer, but you never listen.”
I roll my eyes at her words. She’s one to talk. Heather and I bonded over the fact that we are both extremely introverted and spend most of our time glued to our computers. As a creative writing major, she spends her days and nights writing and reading and has no room to judge me for doing the same, especially since I’m doing it against my will. But I can’t tell her that.
“Let me sleep, Heather, please.”
“You have a test today. Don’t you remember?”
“The test isn’t until Friday.”
“It is Friday, you daft girl.”
I sit up, her words quickly waking me up. My eyes shoot to the alarm clock, and I gasp, letting out a cry as I get up only to fall back down with the sheets tangled at my feet.
“Shit, I’m late. I’m so late!”
Panic climbs up my chest as I hurry to the bathroom, attempting to do two things at once, but only end up making a mess, and by the time I’m leaving the bathroom, I don’t look much better than I did going in.
I don’t spend much time thinking over my wardrobe choices and ignore Heather’s judgmental eyes.
“Don’t forget your reading glasses,” she calls out as I tie my wild curls into a bun. I turn to find my roommate slipping back into her bedroom.
“Catch you later, Heather,” I call hurriedly, grabbing my backpack and rushing through the front door.
I should probably take it as a sign when my car doesn’t start immediately, but I’m too impatient to think about that as I tear out our apartment complex’s parking lot and onto the highway.
Fifteen minutes!
That’s how long I have before the test begins. I can make it. The drive to school is less than ten minutes.
I curse under my breath, frustrated yet again that I have to live off campus rather than in one of the dorms like I’d wanted. But my brother insisted that I live closer to him. And what Tim wants, he gets. No exceptions.
“No!” I cry in alarm when the car starts making sputtering noises not even five minutes into the drive. I contemplate ignoring the weird sounds, except they are becoming louder, and the large red light flashing from the dashboard assures me that it’s not an option. I barely manage to pull to the side of the road before the engine completely dies.
I sit in the car for a full minute, staring at the road ahead in disbelief.
“Okay, you still have time left, no need to panic yet,” I whisper despite my mounting anxiety.
I can’t miss this test. I have never missed a test in my life, not even at fifteen when I had to sit through a pop quiz with a toothache, and I don’t want to miss this one either.
Christ, what do I do?
I can take a computer apart, develop software, and decipher codes that look like gibberish to most people, but when it comes to cars, I am as dumb as a rock. I consider calling Heather, but she knows less about cars than I do. Hell, she doesn’t even have a driver’s license.
My thoughts drift to my brother, but I shove that idea away. As awful as missing this exam would be, it’d still be better than willingly putting myself in my brother’s crosshairs. I’m still paying for the last time I asked Tim for help.
With my list of options dwindling, I lower my eyes to the dashboard clock and let out a low whine when I realize how fast time seems to be flying by. In ten minutes, if I am not in that exam room, I’ll get locked out, and my perfect GPA will be ruined.
The need to cry becomes overwhelming as I consider my options, not that I have any. It only gets worse the second I step out of the car and realize that, not only did my car break down on my way to class, but I also took the wrong exit.
There are only two freaking exits, and I took the wrong one!
I bite into my trembling lip to rein in the tears that threaten to spill before making my way to the front of the car. The hood is hot to the touch, and when I pry it up, thick smoke filters out and gets sucked straight into my lungs.
This time, there’s no stopping the tears that spill, and little of it has anything to do with the smoke burning my eyes. Once I am done coughing my lungs out, I swipe a hand over my wet cheeks and make my way back to the driver’s seat. I don’t have time to cry and feel sorry for myself.
I need to call for help. It’s probably, the first thing I should have done, but my head is all over the place. I dig my hand around in my backpack but come back empty.
No. No, no, no.
I empty everything on the car seat and frantically search for my phone. I could have sworn I grabbed it on my way out.
Didn’t I?
I palm my mouth when I realize that I left it on the bed. How the hell am I going to call for help now?
I push back and stare as cars whip past me and realize that it’s too late. Whatever I do, I’m already late for the test. My perfect GPA is as good as ruined, and all because I slept in and missed one stupid test.
Resigned, I lower myself to the ground beside my car and fight back the need to cry.
It’s no big deal, it’s just a test. So what if I miss one test that makes up 40 percent of the grade? It’s no big deal if I don’t get a perfect score this once.
My heart clenches at the thought, but I don’t get to sink too far into my pity party before a pair of black oxfords step in front of me. I jump back and cry out when I bump my head against the car door that I conveniently forgot to close.
“Ouch,” I whine, rubbing at the sore spot at the back of my head.
I follow the shoes up to tailored dark suit pants, a lean torso in a crisp white shirt, and then to eyes so dark, they’re almost black. The man before me has to be a couple of inches over six feet, but from my position, he feels like an imposing giant. I marvel at how his broad shoulders stretch the fabric of the shirt, but it’s his face . . . his cold, expressionless face that grabs my attention.
His midnight black hair is expertly styled into perfection, giving him an old-fashioned mob boss look. His firm jaw could cut through glass, and the dark stubble on his cheeks only adds to the intensity of his features.
Something about him feels oddly familiar, but I can’t put my finger on it.
Is he a movie star? I could picture him in a French Film Noir with that face. I would pay a fortune to watch that.
“Are you okay?” the man asks in a deep voice that sends a thrill rushing along my skin.
His question slaps me back into reality. I realize what a mess I must look like with disheveled hair and tear stains on my face.
“Uh, yeah,” I whisper, brushing my palms over my wet cheeks. “I just . . . uhm, can I borrow your phone?”
“Perhaps you can tell me why you’re sitting on the edge of a busy road,” he says, extending his hand to help me up. I stare at the massive palm and swallow hard when his long fingers close over mine. He helps me to my feet but doesn’t immediately let go of my hand, which sends my cheeks flaring.
Christ, I can’t blush. I get my milky white skin and red hair from my father’s side of the family, and even the littlest hint of color on my face flashes for miles.
“My car broke down, and now I’m already late for an important test. If I could just borrow your phone, I need to call . . .”
My heart sinks as I realize whom I’ll need to call to take care of this and just how much it’s going to cost me.
