My pulse rises as I check the surrounding code again. The encryption signature is archaic, but not unfamiliar. It’s efficient and elegant—as in Damian’s kind of elegant.
It mirrors his style so precisely that it’s like looking into a distorted version of him. A shadow standing behind him, borrowing his posture.
Or mocking it.
I try to ignore the anxious coil of my stomach.
Coincidence. That’s all.
I start typing thin walls of code that act like a padded room. If this archive is rigged, I want it padded on all sides before I poke it.
Three minutes in, the screen stutters. It’s a forced interruption, like someone tapping the glass from the outside. Nothing to do with my code or connection.
The cursor freezes. The lights dim.
A line of static drags across the monitor, a single glitching ripple before everything snaps back to normal as if it didn’t happen at all.
Someone just touched my machine.
Someone not in this room.
A cold thread winds down my spine, sharp and patient.
I bring up the system log. There—at the bottom—barely visible:
TRACE PING: EXTERNAL // ORIGIN MASKED.
Someone bounced a signal off my system the second I accessed the locked archive.
It’s a very clear warning.
Chapter 3 - Damian
The first sign that my control is slipping is a whisper—in the system is a line of code that shouldn’t exist. But I feel the disturbance like an unwelcome reminder that even my power can be touched.
Anonymous pings. A trace from a server that should have been buried with the dead. My father’s archives… the ones I sealed myself. The ones that were never meant to surface again.
I rerun the diagnostics, even though I already know the result. Her signature blooms across the screen like a bruise.
Harper.
The name sits in my chest like a stone.
She’s been digging through the restricted vault and the mix of heat that hits me is complicated enough that I want to tear something apart. Anger is there, but threaded through it is fear.
Because she is the one person capable of finding exactly what I cannot allow anyone to see.
She’s trespassing in a wound I’ve kept stitched tight for years without even knowing about it.
I wait until evening, when headquarters has settled into that strange hush that feels almost reverent.
Her office spills pale illumination across the hallway. She stands at the center of it, shadows and numbers playing across her face.
For a moment, I pause in the doorway.
She looks… untouchable. Focus sharpened to a point. Her hair is tied back, exposing the sensual curve of her neck.
And fuck, if she’s not as beautiful as the first time I saw her.
