Page 47 of Damsel in Disguise

Her brother Asher, the ruthless Chief Operating Officer of CynoTech, who manages their family’s darker, more violent underworld assets, would be preparing to tear England apart to locate her.

And her cousin Adrian, a man whose analytical intelligence mirrors my own clinical detachment, would already be tracking her last known GPS coordinates.

If they somehow discover she’s within a Triarch Dominion facility, the resulting collateral would disrupt decades of calculated research. So many unknown variables—amidst them, Triarch Dominion eliminating her is the most unnecessary one.

I flex my hand, a cold surge of possessive irritation simmering beneath my calm exterior. Only I get to decide what becomes of Ariella Keinston. Nobody else.

To keep her here, to ensure she remained quiet, contained, and entirely safe from both her family’s interference and the Dominion’s clinical curiosity, I have to execute a flawless deception. I have to manage the Keinstons without letting them realize they are being handled.

I open her primary messaging interface, accessing her secure communications link with her brother to find a text from him already waiting for her to answer.

Asher: Where the fuck are you, Ari? Dad is breathing down my neck. You missed the check-in.

I take a slow breath, adjusting my reading glasses as I study her previous text strings to analyze her syntax, her punctuation habits, and emotional inflections.

She uses casual formatting, distinct sentence fragments, and subtle displays of defensive sarcasm whenever her family pushes too hard.

Then I began fabricating her digital ghost.

Me: Relax. I told you I’m taking a research sabbatical for my advanced electronics modules.

Me: The Oxford labs are locked down for a high-security semiconductor project. No outside communications allowed inside the cleanrooms.

I watch the status indicator on the terminal. Three minutes later, the reply incoming from Sydney flashes on screen. Asher is directly calling her.

Shit. I don’t have any voice modulators ready at the moment.

So I cut the call.

Me: Asher no. Not now, please.

He texts immediately.

Asher: Dad is threatening to send a private transport to drag your ass back to Sydney.

Asher: Btw Adrian tried to ping your device’s primary MAC address and got a localized routing error.

Asher: What the fuck is going on, Ariella?

A muscle in my jaw clenches.

Adrian’s already probing the network. He’s too smart to be fooled by simple text messages. If he detects even a single millisecond of latency variation in the server routing, he’d realize the message isn’t originating from England.

I immediately initiate a bypass command to hijack a low-level corporate server owned by Cynotech’s European distribution branch in London and force her phone’s signal to route through their internal authorized gateway.

To Adrian’s systems, hopefully, it’d look like her device is interacting perfectly with their own corporate infrastructure.

Me: Tell Dad if he sends a car, I’ll legally change my last name and leak the blueprints for the CynoTech patents to the open-source forums.

Me: I’m an adult now so get the fuck off. I’ll be busy for at least five weeks.

Me: Five weeks this will continue like this. So stop tracking me, Asher. I mean it.

I add a sharp edge of entitlement that perfectly mirrors her performance whenever she feels crowded by her brothers.

Another long, heavy silence stretches across the digital wire.

Finally, the screen updates.