Chapter 5: The Live Demo

ATHENA POV

The private conference room at the Imperial Plaza was packed with foreign tech investors. At the center of the mahogany table, Marcus stood confidently, adjusting his tie as a presentation slide projected behind him. Aegis: The Future of Global Data Security.

"With this architecture," Marcus announced, gesturing smoothly to the screen, "we guarantee zero latency and absolute immunity to external breaches. The European sector is ours for the taking."

Chloe Harrington sat near the front, smiling like a proud queen. The investors were nodding, pens hovering over their multi-million dollar contracts.

Then, the heavy double doors opened.

The room went dead silent. Marcus stopped mid-sentence, his jaw dropping slightly.

Lucien walked in first, his posture dominant, his tailored black suit commanding immediate authority. But the real shockwave hit the room when they saw who was attached to his arm. I walked in right beside him, wearing a sleek, silk sapphire dress that screamed old-money elegance. My heels clicked precisely against the hardwood floor.

"Mr. Laurent," the head investor, Mr. Vance Senior's representative, stood up immediately. "We didn't expect you to attend the bidding dinner."

"I rarely miss a poor investment opportunity," Lucien said, his voice smooth, echoing with terrifying calm. He pulled out a chair for me, his hand lingering deliberately on my shoulder. "Please, continue, Marcus. Don't let my fiancée disrupt your pitch."

Fiancée.

The word hit Marcus like a physical blow. His face drained of color as his eyes darted from Lucien’s hand on my shoulder to the massive diamond ring sparkling on my left hand. "Athena?" he stammered, his professional mask cracking completely. "What are you doing here? And what do you mean, fiancée?"

"Mr. Vance," Lucien’s voice dropped into a dangerous, icy register. "You are addressing my future wife. Watch your tone."

Chloe Harrington snapped her head toward Marcus, her expression hardening. "Marcus, what is the meaning of this? Why is your old assistant with your step-brother?"

The investors began to whisper frantically. Marcus was trembling, his fingers clutching the edge of the podium. "Lucien, this is a joke. She's a nobody. She’s an incompetent clerk I fired three days ago!"

"Is she?" I spoke up, my voice remarkably steady, cutting through his panic. I reached into my small clutch and pulled out a sleek, slim silver tablet. I didn't look at Marcus’s angry eyes; I looked directly at the foreign investors. "If Aegis is as flawless as Mr. Vance claims, then his main frame shouldn't mind a real-time stress test."

"What are you doing?" Marcus lunged forward, but Lucien stepped into his path, his towering frame completely blocking him.

"Sit down, Marcus," Lucien said quietly. The pure authority in his voice made Marcus freeze in his tracks.

I tapped a single command on my screen. Execute script: Zero-Day.

On the main projector screen, the beautiful Aegis presentation suddenly vanished. In its place, lines of red code began cascading down like rain. A massive digital clock appeared on the display, counting down.

5... 4... 3...

"Shut it down! Turn off the projector!" Marcus screamed at his technician, but the technician’s keyboard was completely locked.

2... 1...

System Override. Core Database Compromised.

The entire Aegis system crashed, leaving nothing but a blank, black screen with a single sentence in white text: Property of Athena Moretti.

It took exactly five seconds.

The room erupted into absolute chaos. Investors stood up, shouting into their phones, pulling their contracts off the table. Chloe Harrington slapped her folder shut, giving Marcus a look of pure disgust before walking out of the room, her security detail following her.

"You ruined me!" Marcus roared, charging toward the edge of the table, his eyes wild with rage. "You patched the firewall! How did you bypass the Harrington proxy?"

I stood up, calmly placing my tablet back into my clutch. I looked at the man who had stolen my life, and for the first time, I felt absolutely nothing. "Because you only stole the code, Marcus. You never understood how it actually worked."

Lucien offered me his arm, a dark, satisfied smirk playing on his lips. I slid my hand into the crook of his elbow, and together, we walked out of the room, leaving Marcus screaming behind us.

We bypassed the reporters in the lobby and made it to the underground parking garage. The silence of the concrete space was a stark contrast to the madness upstairs. Lucien’s driver opened the door to the luxury sedan, and we both slid into the back seat.

As the car pulled out into the rainy streets, the adrenaline finally began to fade, leaving my hands trembling slightly. I looked down at my lap. We had won. The revenge was clean, perfect, and absolute.

"You did well, Athena," Lucien said, his voice low and intimate in the dark confines of the car. He reached out, his long fingers gently wrapping around my shaking hand, his thumb brushing over my knuckles. "Marcus is finished. The Harrington merger is dead."

I looked up at him, his dark eyes watching me with a strange, intense heat that made my heart race. For a second, I forgot this was all a contract. I forgot he was my boss.

Then, my phone vibrated in my clutch.

I pulled it out, expecting a frantic text from Marcus. Instead, it was an unknown number. I swiped to answer, placing the phone to my ear. "Hello?"

"Miss Moretti?" a raspy, quiet voice answered over the static. "It's Arthur. The private investigator you hired to look into your family's old records."

My chest tightened. I looked at Lucien, who was still holding my hand, his gaze fixed on my face. "Did you find something?" I whispered.

"I found the digital trail of your father's bankruptcy five years ago," the investigator said, his voice chillingly clear. "It wasn't an accident, Miss Moretti. Your father was set up. The shadow corporation that bought out his remaining shares and forced him onto the street... it belongs to Lucien Laurent."