Pustaka
Cari
Beranda / Romance / Crossed Lines / Chapter 58: The hook

Share

Chapter 58: The hook

Penulis: Peggy Damis
last update Terakhir Diperbarui: 2025-09-11 00:44:54

POV: Elara

The clink of cutlery and low hum of conversation faded as Elara leaned back in her chair, Hailey’s laughter still echoing faintly in her ears. Lunch had been… grounding. Hailey always had that effect, light where Elara carried weight, warmth where she braced herself against the cold.

Now, walking alone toward her car, after the parting embrace with Hailey, she tugged her jacket tighter around herself. The city felt sharper somehow, every corner an eye, every shadow a whisper. She knew Damon hadn’t confronted her about ShadowByte yet, but his silence was worse than any accusation. It meant he was playing a long game. And Damon Cross never played unless he knew he’d win.

Sliding into the driver’s seat, Elara let her head fall back against the rest. For one wild second, she wanted to peel back every firewall, every mask, and vanish into the digital ether where no one, not even him, could touch her. ShadowByte didn’t flinch at stares across boardrooms. ShadowByte didn’t feel
Lanjutkan membaca buku ini secara gratis
Pindai kode untuk mengunduh Aplikasi
Bab Terkunci
Bab sebelumnya Bab selanjutnya

Bab terbaru

  • Crossed Lines   Chapter 69: Fault lines

    POV: ElaraShe didn’t need the alert to know something had shifted. It was in the air, the kind of static hum she’d learned to trust long before ShadowByte even became a name whispered in dark forums.Elara sat at her desk, hands still on the keyboard, her gaze fixed on the flow of code that looked clean, way too clean. Clarisse’s people had pulled back. No probing signals, no fumbling attempts. Just silence.Which meant they’d learned enough to know the game wasn’t one-sided anymore.Her stomach knotted.She closed her laptop and leaned back, staring at the ceiling of her apartment. Damon’s voice from the boardroom replayed, calm but cutting. ‘Good. Then you’ll be ready for what comes next’.Maybe he hadn’t been warning her. Maybe he’d been preparing her.Her phone buzzed across the desk, and she snatched it up too quickly. Not Damon. Not Hailey. A message with no sender ID, just a single line of text:Nice trap. Careful who you bait.Elara’s fingers went cold. Clarisse hadn’t spoken

  • Crossed Lines   Chapter 68: Hands on the board

    POV: DamonThe office was quiet, long after it should have emptied. The skyline stretched beyond the glass, fractured into a thousand lights, but Damon’s gaze wasn’t on the city. It was on the dossier open in front of him.Not a company report. Not a merger draft.Elara.She had left the dinner with Clarisse looking composed, but Damon knew better. He had watched the way her shoulders had held too stiff, the way her eyes lingered on the exits. A perfect mask, yes. But masks always cracked in private.His fingers tapped lightly on the arm of his chair. He didn’t have to guess to know what Clarisse was circling. Clarisse was predictable in her arrogance. If she thought she smelled blood, she’d press until she either owned it or destroyed it.But Damon had already confirmed what Clarisse only suspected.Elara wasn’t just another name on his acquisition sheet. She was ShadowByte.And that changed everything.He leaned back, the leather creaking faintly. ShadowByte had left footprints agai

  • Crossed Lines   Chapter 67: Steel under silk

    POV: ClarisseThe report landed on her desk at dawn, a slim dossier wrapped in the kind of silence that already screamed failure.Clarisse slid a manicured nail under the seal, her eyes cool even as irritation curdled in her chest. The first page was all she needed. Contract terminated. Operation suspended. Assets withdrawn.Her jaw tightened. Withdrawn. That word never meant voluntary.She read further anyway, flipping through pages with the precision of someone slicing meat from bone. Every trace of the probe she’d ordered toward ShadowByte had been cut off midstream; clean, surgical. Not a stumble, not a hack-job. Someone had erased her reach.Clarisse set the file down, fingers steepling under her chin.“Elara…” she whispered, though she didn’t believe it. Her stepdaughter was reckless, yes, but this smelled of another hand. Another predator in the dark.Her aide hovered at the door, nervous. “Ma’am, do you want me to…”“Leave.”The word cracked through the room like a whip. The a

  • Crossed Lines   Chapter 66: Silent interference

    POV: DamonThe city sprawled beneath him, alive with lights, a grid of order masking chaos. Damon leaned against the glass of his office window, jacket draped over the back of his chair, shirt sleeves rolled to the elbow. Midnight, and CrossTech’s tower was still humming. He thrived in the hours others faltered.On his desk, two files lay open. One bore Clarisse Duval’s insignia, the other… a series of network reports his internal security team had flagged. Not many men in his position read through their analysts’ logs personally, but Damon wasn’t most men. He preferred to see the fractures himself.The reports confirmed what he already suspected: Clarisse was reaching. Sloppy by her standards. Desperate, even. He had expected her to test the edges of his deal with Duval Holdings, but this? Pulling at threads she couldn’t see the ends of? Dangerous. Reckless. Predictable.His gaze slid to the second file. Encrypted packets traced back to a familiar ghost. ShadowByte.The faintest smil

  • Crossed Lines   Chapter 65: The ghost in the wires

    POV: ElaraBack in her apartment after the dinner with Clarisse.The cursor blinked on her screen like a heartbeat, steady and impatient. Elara leaned closer, chin propped against her hand, eyes scanning the activity logs she’d pulled from her hidden server.Something was off.ShadowByte’s systems were built to ghost through traffic, to mask everything under layers of misdirection. She’d run enough missions to recognize the rhythm of digital noise, the way it usually swelled and ebbed around her operations. But tonight, there was a new hum. Too clean. Too deliberate.She sat back, letting her fingers still on the keyboard.Clarisse.It was only a suspicion, but it fit too well. The sudden call, the pointed words, the weight in her stepmother’s tone, it wasn’t just posturing. Clarisse was pushing somewhere she didn’t belong.Elara closed the laptop slowly, the soft click echoing too loud in her apartment. She pressed her palms against the table, steadying herself.She couldn’t afford t

  • Crossed Lines   Chapter 64: The Queen's gambit

    POV: Elara The silence stretched between them like a drawn wire, dangerous and taut. Clarisse broke it first, her voice low and velvet-smooth. “You’ve grown sharper, Elara. Perhaps sharper than I gave you credit for.” She dabbed her lips with her napkin, movements measured, unhurried. “But steel without polish rusts. Remember that.” Elara smiled faintly, though it didn’t touch her eyes. “And polish without substance shatters under pressure.” For a heartbeat, they just watched each other, two predators locked across the table, the rest of the restaurant reduced to background noise. Then, as if on cue, both women leaned back, each smoothing away the edges of their words with carefully constructed calm. Clarisse lifted her glass again, raising it in a mock toast. “To family,” she said, her tone silk over iron. Elara mirrored her, though her hand was steady only because she forced it to be. “To knowing where we stand.” The clink of crystal rang sharper than it should have. Dinner

Bab Lainnya

Anda juga akan menyukai

Jelajahi dan baca novel bagus secara gratis
Akses gratis ke berbagai novel bagus di aplikasi GoodNovel. Unduh buku yang kamu suka dan baca di mana saja & kapan saja.
Baca buku gratis di Aplikasi
Pindai kode untuk membaca di Aplikasi
DMCA.com Protection Status