Chapter 3

That place held everything I had given up for Selena.

Now, I would find them and bring them back, piece by piece.

…

I parked the car in front of the abandoned warehouse that used to be my studio.

Three years ago, I disbanded the team and abandoned the title of my genius hacker persona, "A", all for the sake of taking better care of Selena.

At the time, I sealed everything away in this warehouse and told myself that my family was more important than my career.

Now, I realized just how ridiculously wrong I had been.

As I pushed open the dusty doors, the familiar tang of metals and electronic parts rushed into my nose.

Then, I headed straight to the deepest part of the studio and yanked off an enormous dust cover. Underneath it was a matrix composed of row upon row of precision servers and over a dozen monitors.

The instant I flipped the power source switch, a soft humming began while the monitors gradually lit up one by one, bathing me in a cold blue light.

I sat down and allowed my fingers to fly across the keyboard, reawakening the codes and commands I had sealed away three years ago.

I had to look into just what Shane was up to. There was definitely something up with that woman mentioned in the pregnancy checkup report, Leah York.

After all, Shane was an incredibly conceited man. If he really had found his true love, a woman willing to give him a child, then he wouldn't be acting the way he had earlier tonight—a complex mix of gloating smugness and resentment.

Instead, it was more like he was using an extreme method to declare his ownership of Selena and, at the same time, thoroughly snuff out my wishful thinking.

In no time at all, I succeeded in hacking through an encoded database, allowing me access to all information on Leah.

She was Shane's current girlfriend and a small-time model with hardly any popularity. Her résumé was squeaky clean, but it didn't take me long to discover something strange.

The last photo she had posted on her social media was from one month ago. In it, her abdomen was still flat as she lounged on a beach.

However, the pregnancy report stated that she was supposed to be 12 weeks along, which was three months.

The timelines didn't align.

I continued to dig further by checking her transaction records and whereabouts the past three months, only to realize that there was nothing related to a pregnancy. In fact, the establishment she frequented the most was actually a private aesthetic clinic.

My lips curled into a cold smirk. As I expected, there was something fishy going on.

Following that, I hacked into the clinic's system and easily found Leah's file. She wasn't pregnant at all, and the reason she had gone there was to undergo liposuction.

As for the doctor who had signed off on that fake pregnancy checkup report, he happened to receive a transfer of 500 thousand dollars into his bank account yesterday.

The sender of that money was none other than Shane's assistant.

Everything became clear to me.

From the get-go, Shane had simply been putting on a show. All that bullshit about finding his true love was nothing but a lie meant to aggravate Selena and humiliate me. He had wanted to prove that even if he didn't want Selena anymore, she was still his possession.

And Selena, my dear wife, actually believed in such a lousy lie and willingly cooperated with him, turning me into a toy to be played with.

I gathered all the evidence, encrypted it with a password, and then sent it to another cloud drive for safekeeping.

By the time I finished, dawn was already peeking over the horizon.

Leaning back in my chair, I stared at the data and numbers flashing across my screens as my hatred and fury threatened to consume me whole.

Three years of enduring and contributions, yet all I received in return was an elaborate scheme to humiliate me. Both Shane and Selena had treated me like a fool, one whom they could walk all over as they pleased.

"Shane Johnson, Selena Sander, did you two seriously believe I was an easy target to bully?" I growled.

Shutting off my computer, I stood up.

Outside the warehouse, the early morning light was piercing through the darkness. I thought this was the perfect symbolism for the show that was about to start.

I was done holding back. I wanted them to pay dearly for their actions. I wanted Selena to know just what she had given up on.

More importantly, I wanted Shane to understand that a gardener could also sometimes turn into a scythe-wielding grim reaper.