That was not the reaction of a man unbothered.
Was Darcy lying when he claimed he hadn’t matched with her on purpose, just to spite her? Her mind flicked back to what Jane had said about tech ethics, but she dismissed it. She’dheard enough from colleagues and sources in the tech space to know how often companies manipulated user data. It wasn’t far-fetched to imagine that Darcy had traced her digital identity the moment after she spoke at the gala, or that he’d been notified as soon as she signed up for TrueNorth. That possibility made a disturbing kind of sense. Maybe he had deliberately matched with her, then shown up to their first meeting just to gauge her reaction. If she had backed out, it could have ended her investigation before it even began. But since she hadn’t, perhaps everything he’d done since then—his restraint, his conversation, even his charm—was part of a calculated attempt to shape the version of himself she would write about.
“Lord Jesus.” She exclaimed at her realisation.
She sat forward, reaching for her notebook without fully realising she was doing it. Flipped it open. Found a blank page.
At the top, she wrote one name.
Darcy.
Then, beneath it, another.
Wickham.
She didn’t hesitate before drawing a line between them.
This wasn’t about an app anymore. It wasn’t even about a scandal. It was about power—who had it, who lost it, and who got erased in the process.
Elizabeth capped her pen and leaned back again, pulse steady now. Focused.
She wasn’t ready to write anything yet.
But she knew where she was looking first.
And for the first time since the gala, the certainty felt… grounding.
Chapter NINE
“CAN WEmeet?”
Elizabeth woke up to the message from Mr. F – Fitzwilliam Darcy.
For a second, she stared at it like it was a glitch. The morning sun hadn’t fully warmed her apartment, and her thoughts were still fogged with sleep, but that one message cleared them fast. Her thumb hovered over the screen.
No emoji. No punctuation. Just three plain words.
She set the phone down and pulled the blanket tighter around her. Her coffee hadn’t even brewed yet, and already the day was asking for decisions.
Of all the potential people who could message her,she hadn’t expected it to be him.
Of course, they were due for a third date. That was the plan.
But not so soon—or so she thought.
And certainly not like this.
There was something about the timing of his message that made her uneasy. A little too fast. A little too neat. After everything Wickham had told her the night before, the message felt heavier than it should have. Like a test. Or a trap. Like Darcy somehow knew she’d spoken to Wickham and was already moving to do damage control—or worse, damage.
Her mind spun through it all again—the messages Wickham had left, the calm way he’d spoken about betrayal, the precision of his accusations. The implication that Darcy had systematically erased him from every digital record. That someone as powerful and calculated as Fitzwilliam Darcy had the reach to do so.
Wickham had spoken with a kind of calm that didn’t need convincing. He hadn’t begged her to believe him. He hadn’t exaggerated. He’d simply laid out a version of events that—uncomfortably—aligned a little too well with her worst impressions of Fitzwilliam Darcy. And more than that, men in Wickham’s position didn’t go after billionaires like Darcy on a whim. Not without reason—and certainly not without some truth to stand on. Otherwise, they got buried in lawsuits. Or worse, they just disappeared.
Thinking of what she knew (and nowknows) about Fitzwilliam Darcy, it wasn’t far-fetched that the accusation made sense.
Dismissive. Controlled. Intolerably self-assured. From the moment he’d answered her question to when he looked her up and down at the gala and declared she was “not handsome enough to tempt him,” Darcy had been a masterclass in egotistical, self-absorbed billionaire arrogance. Wickham hadn’t told her anything she hadn’t already sensed. He’d only confirmed it.
So why did part of her still want to hear what Darcy had to say?
