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chapter 30: The trap

Author: Peggy Damis
last update Huling Na-update: 2025-08-27 00:55:50

POV: Damon

Damon Cross didn’t believe in coincidences.

Not when it came to billion-dollar contracts. Not when it came to enemies who smiled too easily. And certainly not when it came to ShadowByte.

The breach had been cleaned far too cleanly. Whoever had scrubbed the traces wasn’t just good, they were precise, surgical, elegant in a way Damon had seen only once before.

It gnawed at him.

He sat in his office long after the rest of CrossTech’s executive floor had gone dark, the city humming below. The data logs scrolled across his monitors, not the raw breach anymore, but the cleanup. Each keystroke was like a fingerprint, and Damon prided himself on recognizing patterns.

And this one… was familiar. Too familiar.

“Elara Duval,” he murmured under his breath, tasting the name. He didn’t know for certain, but the timing was too convenient. Their paths crossing at the symposium, her sudden reemergence in spaces she usually avoided, the flicker of fire in her eyes when they’d spoken…
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  • Crossed Lines   Chapter 75: The Launch

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  • Crossed Lines   Chapter 74: Static between us

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  • Crossed Lines   Chapter 73: The Cracks we keep

    POV: ElaraThe morning after was worse than she’d feared.Her phone buzzed relentlessly, screen flashing with alerts, pings, and unread messages. She ignored them until one headline forced her thumb to stop:Duval Heiress and CrossTech CEO: Power Couple of the Year?Her stomach turned.Swipe.From Consulting firm to Society Pages: Elara Duval’s Stunning Move.Swipe.Clarisse Duval Declines Comment on Stepdaughter’s “Romance.”Her grip tightened until the phone creaked. Of course Clarisse had refused comment. The silence itself was strategy, a sharpened knife dressed as poise. Every second Clarisse stayed quiet, the story grew in the press’s imagination.By the time Elara arrived at CrossTech, the lobby was packed with reporters. Cameras flashed like lightning storms.“Miss Duval! Over here! Did you and Mr. Cross meet through business or romance?”“Was the merger between CrossTech and Duval Holdings part of a courtship strategy?”“Are wedding bells already in sight?”She forced her chi

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    POV: ElaraIt should have been a routine day.Elara had wrapped a long strategy session with Damon’s senior engineers, hours spent tracing the threads of the cyberattack that had nearly crippled CrossTech weeks ago. By the time she left the boardroom, she was bone-tired, head filled with lines of code and contingency maps. All she wanted was to go home, brew coffee, and sink into silence.The lobby was crowded, but not unusually so. A handful of suited employees moved briskly past the security gates, their badges flashing. The only anomaly was the subtle hum of outside noise; voices bleeding through the glass doors, too loud, too many.She didn’t realize what was happening until Damon stepped out of the elevator behind her.The instant his tall frame came into view, the lobby erupted. Cameras flashed, shutters clicked, voices barked questions in rapid succession.“Elara! Elara Duval…are you confirming the rumors?”“Mr. Cross! How long have you and Ms. Duval been seeing each other?”“I

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