Her expression sours even more.
“I didn’t say you were.”
But the words sit wrong, like a too-heavy weight placed on a delicate balance.
She turns away before I can respond, leaving the faintest scent of her perfume trailing behind her. The door closes softly, but the silence she leaves behind is anything but soft.
Inessa appears less than ten minutes later.
She slips inside with a soft knock, sensing the lingering crack in the air Harper left behind. Her eyes take a slow, sweeping inventory of the room before settling on my face.
“I hope I’m not interrupting,” she says, though she is fully aware she is.
“What do you need, Inessa?”
She smiles, not exactly flirty, but something along the line. “Just clarifying tomorrow’s agenda.”
She steps closer to the desk.
“You seem tense today,” she adds, tilting her head in faux concern.
“I’m not,” I lie without effort.
She watches me for a moment, then says, “If I may ask, Harper looked upset when she left. Everything all right?”
The question is wrapped in innocence, a blade wrapped in silk.
Cold trickles down my spine. She’s not just observing.
She’s probing, testing how tightly Harper and I are bound.
I suppress the urge to bare my teeth.
“Ms. Markova,” I say evenly, “my personal life is not part of your job description.”
Her eyes shine with triumph masked as apology.
“My mistake,” she says softly. “I only meant well. Two strong leaders working together… the dynamic can be complicated.”
Get out, I want to say.
Instead: “Is that all?”
She leaves with a quiet nod, but her satisfied little smile lingers in the space after she slips out the door.
Two days later, the first breach appears.
It’s nearly invisible. A needle-thin puncture in a secondary archive server, nothing that would set off obvious alarms, but enough to register on the deeper diagnostic logs I monitor personally.
A test breach skillfully executed. Someone is pressing against the walls to see which bricks crumble.
I track the packet traffic. It snakes through encrypted relay points with elegant precision, masking its true origin like a shadow slipping through mirrors.
But patterns always leave fingerprints—even well-hidden ones.
When I isolate the fragments, I realize the routing signature isn’t random or external.
It runs directly through Inessa’s access terminals.
