เข้าสู่ระบบCHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHTPOV: AvaAfter Dominic left for his coffee break, I got straight to work, because I already knew what was coming, and I knew exactly how to stop it. I wasn't going to let Dillan, or whoever he was working for, get their hands on Dominic's company.I didn't fully understand yet what they were planning, but I understood enough to know I had to protect Dominic, and this company, from whatever they had in mind.I started reinforcing every layer of security Dominic had, at the office, at his house, everything I could reach remotely. I locked down protocols so tight not even the best hacker in that underground facility could breach them.The prototype could act as a Trojan horse, pulling sensitive documents straight off a company's servers undetected. It could authorise fund transfers, move money invisibly, commit crimes under a completely false digital trail. And I'd just discovered something new buried in the design, something even worse. It could plant fabricated evi
POV: AvaBeep, beep, beep.No. My alarm. Please tell me last night was all a dream. I groaned, grabbed my phone, switched the alarm off, and dropped it back on the bed. I sat up slowly, reaching for painkillers, because I already knew I'd need them.I didn't want to get out of bed. I didn't want to go to work. But I couldn't let last night mess with my job, not on top of everything else already sitting on my plate.I finally dragged myself up, showered, got ready, grabbed a quick breakfast. I decided to walk to work instead of driving, not trusting my head, and it gave me a little extra time to clear my mind before facing Dominic. By the time I reached the building, I found myself frozen just outside the doors, deciding exactly how to play this.I settled on normal. Act completely normal, and never bring up last night at all. I took a few slow breaths and walked in."Morning," I said, smiling at the receptionist."Morning, Ava. Just a heads up, he's not in the best of moods today," sh
POV: AvaWhen the blindfold finally came off, I blinked hard against the sudden light and looked around.My stomach dropped straight through the floor.We were inside an underground facility.It was huge, cold, and brightly lit with the same clinical white lights you would expect to see in a hospital. But instead of beds, there were rows of workstations. Hackers sat hunched over multiple monitors, their fingers moving quickly across their keyboards. Scientists in lab coats moved from one station to another with the kind of quiet urgency you only saw when the work actually mattered to whoever was paying for it.It looked like something straight out of a movie.Except the danger in the room felt real enough to taste.Nobody looked up as I was led through the facility.That alone told me a lot.People who could stay so focused and calm while a blindfolded, handcuffed woman was being dragged past their desks were people who had stopped asking questions a long time ago.Dillan led me towar
POV: AvaDillan sent me an address, and I regretted agreeing to it the moment I actually arrived. An abandoned warehouse on the edge of the industrial district, nothing but broken streetlights and empty loading bays. Dillan was sitting in the front passenger seat of a blue van, a stranger beside him in the driver's seat, looking at me the way a predator looks at something it's already decided to eat.The second I stepped out of my car, Dillan was out of the van and on me, furious that I'd driven myself instead of letting him collect me. His hands wrapped around my throat before I could even get a word out."You came here yourself instead of letting me pick you up?" he snarled, squeezing. "Are you hiding something from me, Ava? Why won't you let me come over? I'm sure you let the boss come over to your place whenever he wants. Why him and not me? Why can't I know where you live?""Stop it, Dillan!" the stranger shouted from the driver's seat. "You'll kill her!"He wrenched Dillan's han
POV: AvaI wanted it so badly it frightened me. His mouth on mine, his hands at my waist, every part of me had wanted to lean into that kiss and let it go exactly where it was heading. But somewhere underneath the wine and the wanting, a colder, steadier part of me was already doing the maths, and the maths told me exactly why I had to pull away.People already believed I was sleeping with my boss. I’d seen it in every whispered conversation that cut off the second I walked into a room, in the way Sharon and Shelley had already gone on camera together painting me as some kind of home-wrecking opportunist who’d slept her way into a contract. Being caught with him again, days after that leaked video, days after the two of them had already tried her hardest to brand me a whore in front of the whole city, would look exactly like confirmation. Like acceptance of the label they’d already stapled to my name.And there was something else, something I hadn’t even let myself think all the way t
POV: DominicI watched her finish up the dishes, taking her time with it, and I had a feeling she needed that time as much as I needed mine, some distance to steady whatever had just passed between us at that sink. I know I did. Having her that close, watching that look in her eyes, had done things to me that had no business happening in my own kitchen on a Tuesday night."I think that's them done, Ava," I said, pulling myself out of my own head."Yes, looks like it," she laughed."Come on, let's go sit down," I said, smiling at her.I grabbed a bottle of wine and our two glasses, and we headed through to the living room, my hand landing at the small of her back as we walked. I felt her flinch slightly under my touch, a small shiver that she tried to hide by turning her face away from me. She sat down quickly, putting a careful distance between us on the sofa. I took the seat right beside her anyway, closing that gap without a word, and poured us both a glass of wine."Thank you," she







