Send an Encrypted Message to the Men

Ah, the Pavlovich brothers. Four ghosts from the old world, slipping across borders like smoke. They specialize in extractions—kidnapping the untouchable, the well-guarded, the powerful. If you want someone plucked from their fortress and delivered without a trace, you call the Pavlovichs. But here’s the rub: when men like that come to town, they’re never here for small fish. And Lizzy, bless her heart, she’s about to discover that the brothers’ latest target strikes much closer to home than she could ever imagine. Family, after all, has a way of complicating even the neatest of criminal arrangements.

Send an Encrypted Message to the Men

“Ah, Milton Bobbit. A man who sells death the way most sell life insurance. Imagine, Matthew, a polite actuary with a morbid little hobby—convincing the terminally ill to become contract killers, promising their families financial stability in exchange for one last act of violence. Ingenious, really, if not unspeakably cruel. But Bobbit isn’t the only problem. There’s always a bigger picture—hidden motives, darker ties, and the inconvenient fact that some debts aren’t so easily erased. And Lizzy, well…she’s beginning to suspect that the answers to her questions might be as dangerous as the questions themselves.”

Send an Encrypted Message to the Men

Ah, Ivan. Now there’s a name that stirs up memories—none of them pleasant.

This particular episode begins, as these things often do, with an inexplicable tragedy: a young man run off the road, his body battered, his secrets buried deep beneath the surface of a very tidy cover story. But I know better. Accidents of that sort are rarely accidental.

At the center of it all is a ghost in the machine—Ivan. A whisper, really. A digital phantom with a penchant for pilfering national secrets and sowing chaos wherever his fingers dance across a keyboard. Most men rob banks. Ivan robs governments.

But here’s the delicious twist, the kind that would make Hitchcock sit up and take notes: Ivan isn’t who we think he is. No, no. The devilish little surprise? He’s a teenager with a crush and a curious definition of courtship. He didn’t want to dismantle the country—he wanted to impress a girl.

Still, the stolen tech in question, a prototype device capable of disabling entire defense systems, remains in play. And trust me, the people willing to kill for it aren’t in this game for love. They’re in it for leverage, power—the usual intoxicants.

So Lizzie and I race the clock, Ivan’s antics bring the FBI to the brink, and somewhere between cyber warfare and adolescent infatuation, we’re reminded that even in the coldest crimes, there’s often a beating heart. Misguided, sure. But human nonetheless.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a date with a bottle of Barolo and an old Soviet defector who still thinks the Cold War is in overtime. Cheers.