He, on the other hand, had just engaged in stupidity.

Miles the doorman checked his watch as Kyle passed by the front lobby desk.

“Can’t even give yourself a break on a Saturday night?”

“No rest for the wicked,” Kyle said with an easy grin.

He caught an elevator and pushed the button for the thirty-fourth floor, the penthouse. Just before the doors shut, a man in his late twenties wearing jeans and a ski pullover scrambled in. He blinked in recognition when he saw Kyle but said nothing as he pushed the button to the twenty-third floor.

They rode the elevator in silence, but Kyle knew it wouldn’t last. Eventually, the other guy would say something. Some people cussed him out, others high-fived him, but they always said something.

When the elevator arrived at the twenty-third floor, the guy glanced over before stepping out. “For what it’s worth, I thought the whole thing was pretty funny.”

One of the high-fivers. “Too bad you weren’t on the grand jury,” Kyle said.

He rode the elevator to the top floor, space he shared with two other penthouse apartments. He let himself into his apartment, peeled off the sweaty nylon jacket he wore, and tossed it over the back of one of the bar stools in front of his kitchen counter. Per his instructions, his place had been designed with an open floor plan, with all of the living space except the bedrooms flowing together for an airy feel that complemented the floor-to-ceiling windows that ran along two walls. He had a spectacular view of the lake, although on most days everything outside looked gray and dull. Par for the course for Chicago in March.

“If you ever have to work a deal for me to serve home detention again,” he’d joked to his sister, Jordan, when she and their father had been visiting the week before, “make sure the Feds include a provision that says I get to spend the cold months on a beach in Malibu.”

Their father, apparently unamused, had walked out of the room to take a phone call.

“Too soon,” Jordan had said, shaking her head.

“You have no problem making prison jokes,” Kyle pointed out defensively. In fact, his sister had developed quite an annoying knack for them lately.

Jordan had waved around a Mrs. Fields cookie she’d pilfered from a tin in his pantry. “Yeah, but I’ve known since we were three that you’re a moron. Strangely, it took Dad this long to figure it out.” She’d smiled sweetly as she took another bite.

“Thanks. Hey, genius—that cookie’s five months old.” Kyle had chuckled as his sister scrambled for a paper towel.

Later, on her way out the door, Jordan had revisited the issue, more seriously this time. “Don’t worry about Dad. He’ll get there eventually.”

Kyle hoped Jordan was right. For the most part, their father had handled Kyle’s very public arrest and conviction as well as could be expected. Like Jordan, Grey had been at all of Kyle’s court appearances and had visited him in prison every week. Still, things were a little awkward with his dad these days, and there was no doubt that a man-to-man conversation was in order.

Eventually.

Pushing that issue temporarily aside, Kyle stripped out of his running clothes and took a quick shower. He checked his watch and saw that he had a good half hour before his visitors arrived, so he settled in at the desk in his office to read the evening news on his thirty-inch flat-screen monitor.

After perusing the national news, he skimmed the Tech section of the Wall Street Journal. He exhaled in annoyance when he saw that his upcoming court appearance was the second story on the page.

At least he hadn’t been one of the headlines, although he had no doubt that his picture would once again be plastered all over the papers come Tuesday, when the judge ruled on the government’s motion. It was ridiculous, really, that one screwup—yes, he’d screwed up, he fully admitted that—had gotten this much attention. People broke the law every day. Okay, several federal laws in his case, but still.

Kyle ignored the Wall Street Journal story, not needing to go over the lurid details. He knew full well what he’d done—hell, half the free world knew what he’d done. In legal terms, he’d been convicted of multiple counts of electronic transmission of malicious codes to cause damage to protected computers. In tech terms—language he preferred over all that lawyer-speak—five months ago he’d orchestrated a distributed denial of service attack against a global communications network through the use of a “botnet,” a network of computers infected via malware without their owners’ knowledge or consent.

Or, in the common vernacular, he’d hacked into Twitter and crashed the site for two days in what was undoubtedly the most boneheaded move of his life.

And the whole thing had started over a woman.

He’d met Daniela, a Victoria’s Secret model who lived in New York, at a friend’s art show in SoHo, and they’d hit it off instantly. She was beautiful, she had a genuine appreciation for art and photography and could talk passionately about the subject for hours, and she didn’t take herself too seriously. They’d spent the entire weekend together in New York, a whirlwind of sex, restaurants, bars, and fun—which was all that Kyle had been looking for at the time.

They had begun casually dating long distance after that, with Kyle flying out to New York a few times over the next several months to see Daniela, and the tabloids had begun to gossip about their relationship. The supermodel and the billionaire heir.

“Imagine that. My brother’s dating another model,” Jordan had called to say after seeing him and Daniela mentioned in the Scene and Heard column of the Tribune. “Ever think about diversifying your portfolio?” she’d asked dryly.

“Why?” he’d said matter-of-factly. “I like dating models.”

“Not enough to introduce any of them to me or Dad,” she’d shot back.

His sister always did have the most annoying way of pointing out things like that.

It was true, he’d never been in a long-term relationship, and there was one simple reason for that: he liked being single. As well he should. Over the course of the last nine years, he’d settled into his life at Rhodes Corporation, climbing up the corporate ladder all the way to executive vice president of network security. He worked hard, but he also liked to play hard, and he saw no reason to tie himself down to one woman. He always kept things light and easy, never promising anything more than a good time for however long things lasted.

Still, Jordan’s comment nagged at him. The bachelor scene had begun to feel a little…old at times. Sure, a man in his position generally never had problems meeting women, but he was starting to wonder whether casual dating and hot hookups were enough. He’d always assumed he’d settle down at some point—he’d grown up in a happy, loving family and knew that was something he wanted for himself eventually—so he figured, perhaps, it was time he started taking some steps toward that.

With that in mind, he’d begun to spend more weekends with Daniela, either flying out to New York to visit her or paying for her to come to Chicago. He wasn’t naive enough to think their relationship was perfect, but in the nine years he’d played the field, he’d yet to find this so-called “perfect fit” with any woman. So he ignored those concerns—after all, a man could do a lot worse than having a Victoria’s Secret model in his bed on a regular basis.

But about six months into their relationship, when Daniela asked about meeting his family, Kyle hesitated. Because he’d never introduced them to a woman before, it seemed like a huge step. Gigantic. For years, it had been just the three of them: him, his dad, and Jordan. Together they’d navigated the often-surreal spotlight they’d been thrust into because of his father’s wealth and, miraculously, had come out mostly normal on the other side. So despite the fact that he’d been dating Daniela longer than anyone else, and had even twice used the word girlfriend when describing her, he’d hemmed and hawed and changed the subject without giving her a direct answer.

Perhaps that had been the first sign of trouble.

The following week, Daniela had called him, speaking so fast that he could barely understand her with her Brazilian accent. She told him that she’d been cast in a music video—something she was very excited about, since she wanted to transition into acting. On her way to Los Angeles, she’d surprised Kyle by stopping in Chicago for a night to celebrate. A sweet thought, but unfortunately, he had a work conflict that evening.

“You should’ve called me first—I’m having dinner tonight with my entire management team,” he’d told her apologetically. As executive vice president of network security, he liked to meet at least twice a year with his managers in a nonwork environment. “We’re discussing intrusion prevention, network access control, and threat response products.” He’d winked. “Very sexy stuff.”

Daniela showed zero interest in the subject, which was not unusual. Actually, Kyle had yet to find a girl who showed any genuine interest in his job—although many of them were plenty captivated by the penthouse and Mercedes SLS AMG it afforded him.

“But if I’d told you, it wouldn’t have been a surprise.” Daniela pouted. “Can’t you skip it? What will your father do? Ground you for not going to some boring meeting with a bunch of computer nerds?”

Not surprisingly, that comment hadn’t gone over so well with Kyle.

Perhaps their conversations were getting lost in translation, or maybe she truly didn’t care. But Daniela had never seemed to grasp that his job at Rhodes Corporation was a real position. Not to toot his own horn, but he was a shining star at the company—and it wasn’t because he was the boss’s son. He was, simply, just that good at what he did.