I stepped closer, unable to keep still. “Explain.”
Becket pointed at a blinking node. “If this is Harmony’s fail-safe… it means the intruder didn’t replicate her work. They accessed it.”
Harmony’s face went pale. “Meaning?”
“They had your original passwords at some point,” Becket said. “Or watched you enter them. Or someone who did gave them access.”
Her knees buckled slightly. I wrapped my arm around her waist instantly.
“Sunshine?”
Her voice was paper-thin. “There were only three people who ever saw me use those channels. My father. Olivier. And Nico, once, when he stole my laptop.”
The air in the room changed.
Becket’s brows pulled tight. “Olivier saw you use the system?”
Harmony nodded slowly. “He thought it was a game. He thought it was funny I could break into Dad’s encrypted files.” Her breath trembled. “Then he realized I wasn’t playing.”
I felt rage coil hot in my stomach.
Becket swore under his breath. “If Olivier had even partial access… if he remembered enough to recreate a fork…”
Harmony whispered, “He could move through it like I did.”
The room went silent, the kind that was bone chilling.
Finally, Becket pushed back from the table. “I need another hour. Maybe two. Stay put. Do not touch anything yet, Harmony. I mean it.”
“I won’t,” she said.
He didn’t look convinced, but he grabbed both laptops and moved to the dining room, muttering to himself, then he was on the phone talking code replication and stored encryption paths.
As soon as he was gone, Harmony sagged into the stool. “Eric…”
I cupped her face gently. “I’m here. I’m not leaving.”
Her eyes glimmered with the kind of exhausted and overwhelmed look that came from realizing the threat circling her wasn’t random. It was personal. Deeply personal.
“I didn’t want you involved in my messed-up life, my crazy family,” she whispered.
I pulled her against me, holding her tight. “I’m in deep. This information doesn’t change anything.”
She buried her face in my chest. “I think I need to see it. The code. The relay. I won’t do anything. I just… I need to see it.”
I inhaled slowly. “We’ll talk to Becket. Thesecondhe says it’s safe.”
She nodded, but the tension in her shoulders told me she wasn’t waiting. She already had a plan forming. She wasn’t going to sit on the sidelines while someone used her own creation to torment her. And no matter how badly I wanted to protect her from all of it… I knew better. Harmony wasn’t breakable. She was preparing to fight.
CHAPTER 35
Harmony
I told myself I wasn’t breaking the rules. Not really. I told Sandy I’d stay late to finish inventory and lock up, insisted she go home because she’d been on her feet all day. It wasn’t a lie because I counted every receipt, I cleaned every cooler, and every bouquet was logged for tomorrow’s wedding. By the time the shop finally went quiet, Main Street was thinning out, the festival lights dimming to a soft glow that made everything look calmer than it really was.
The loft wasn’t a second location in my mind. It was upstairs. One staircase. One locked door. I texted Eric that I was still at the shop finishing up, and I’d head back soon. I didn’t tell him I was going upstairs. I didn’t tell him I had a plan. Because if I said it out loud, he would’ve stopped me.
And because the truth was, I wasn’t running anymore. I was done waiting for someone else to find answers that belonged to me. The old server handle had been nagging at the back of my mind since the kitchen that morning, since Becket pulled up the relay diagrams and something inside me recognized patterns before fear could catch up. If someone was using what I built, I needed to see it for myself. Just a look. Just confirmation. Nomessages sent. No doors opened. That’s what I told myself as I unlocked the door to the loft and stepped inside.
