And the only people who would get hurt in this scenario were the ones who had had it coming for years: Harry Owen and Bill Green—Aiden’s father. Ironically, humiliating and destroying Harry Owen was the stepping stone to the ultimate humiliation and destruction of his father. But Leah was the catalyst. Without her, each plan would fail. So he had made sure that he hit every pressure point with Leah so that she would agree to the break-in.

What Leah didn’t know was that the data filling Aiden’s USB stick was more than the files that Leah had targeted.

It was the entire contents of Harry’s laptop. Aiden had altered the code so that everything on Harry’s laptop became his.

Harry’s life was now in the palm of Aiden’s hand.

Just like Aiden’s life had been in the palm of Harry’s hand seven years ago, when Harry had flicked away Aiden’s future as if it was a piece of dirt.

“You stick it to me. I stick it to you,” Aiden murmured.

Aiden would finally have his revenge on the Dishonorable Harry Owen. On the criminal justice system. On the effing governments that tried to control something that was uncontrollable. No one could control the undercurrents that flowed through the Internet.

His father would soon learn that lesson the hard way.

But first, he had to let Condor and the rest of the hacktivists in the Forum know that Leah’s mission had been accomplished.

He logged in to the Forum. In reality, it was a private chat room on the Internet. Just a space in the ether that became a ‘room’ by virtue of wires, radio waves and arbitrary bits and bytes that kept unwanted visitors away.

He typed: Hey. We did it.

Within seconds, Tr0lz answered: It worked, AggroBoy?

Aiden could almost see the wink that went with Tr0lz’s question. They had planned this out so that no one in the Forum knew that he and Tr0lz had executed an exploit within an exploit.

In fact, no one knew that it was really Tr0lz who controlled the Forum. Condor had no clue.

Aiden whistled softly under his breath and typed a response to Tr0lz’s post: Got myself a package.

What kind of package? Tr0lz asked. Aiden could sense Tr0lz’s smirk.

I got the files that WhiteDwarf was talking about.

Condor jumped in—just like Aiden knew he would: Where’s WhiteDwarf?

The guy was in love with Leah. It had given Aiden great satisfaction to know that he had trumped the self-righteous prick and taken Leah for himself. And soon, Condor would discover that Aiden had trumped him again with this exploit.