Two are dead.
The message contains a single line:
–957|A.L—
Anton Lebedev’s old signature. Fragmented but unmistakable.
My jaw goes stone-hard.
Harper is standing directly in the path of whatever storm Anton is resurrecting. She is touching data she should never have seen, stepping into shadows she doesn’t know how to navigate.
The thought sends a sharp, unwelcome spike of something protective through me. Something I don’t allow myself to feel.
I’m moving before I know I’ve made the choice. I cross the room, set the glass down, and stare at the encrypted message again as if I can extract meaning by force.
Anton was the family’s prodigy once—before he turned rogue. Brilliant, obsessive, devoted to the Ignatovs until betrayal twisted him into something venomous.
He vanished into the underworld of data warfare, taking secrets with him. Secrets about my father, about the Ignatov “cleanses,” about things no one was meant to revisit.
Harper is inches from uncovering those secrets.
Anton is watching her.
My pulse pounds once. I know what I need to do, and none of it involves distance.
She won’t like the intrusion. She’ll fight me, but I need her obedience either by hook or by crook.
I swipe the message away.
Anton is back. The past is sliding out of the dark with teeth bared.
And the woman who can unravel me with a look, who can shatter ten years of discipline with one breath has just stepped into the center of a game she doesn’t even know she’s playing.
I close my eyes. She is in danger.
Chapter 4 - Harper
UNAUTHORIZED QUERY DETECTED.
COUNTERMEASURES ENGAGED.
The moment I enter my workstation, my screens glow with the wrong shade of blue. Half the systems I touched last night refuse to wake, locked behind access tiers I’m not supposed to even know exist.
I tap a command, only for this warning to crawl across the screen in black letters, red outline.
Fuck.
I’ve never seen this protocol.
Not even during the war, when the Ignatov servers were practically bleeding under constant assault. It’s too sophisticated, too… personal.
My pulse jitters, trying to climb into my throat. Someone caught me digging.
But who?
Damian’s security team is terrifyingly competent, yes, but whoever mirrored my trace last night had signature precision.
I attempt another workaround. The system snaps shut again.
