Chapter 11: Cipher Messages ( Sienna)

After the deep romantic encounter at the gym, I had bound Jaxson’s joint with heavy compression straps and practically forced him into his room with anti-inflammatories,then I moved to the his estate.

I sat on the edge of the mattress, wrapped in an oversized sweater, staring down at my hands. They were still trembling slightly. The phantom heat of Jaxson’s skin seemed to linger on my fingertips, a persistent hum that made my chest tighten every time I recalled the dangerous proximity of his lips against mine.

The feeling of isolation had already down on me the moment I left him.

I was miles away from civilization, trapped in a high-tech fortress with a man who looked at me with a mixture of raw desire and lethal paranoia.

I needed a lifeline. I needed an objective voice, a sanity check, a link back to the grounded, logical world I had left behind in Poland.

Reaching into my pocket, I pulled out my satellite-encrypted smartphone, a high security device built specifically for my medical consulting firm. I needed to reach my team back at our clinical research facility in Kraków. I needed to cross-reference Jaxson’s earlier MRI scans with the physical instability I had felt in his knee today, and more importantly, I needed to check if Arthur Vance had made any aggressive moves against our firm while I was off the grid.

I tapped the screen, opening our military-grade communication app.

Connecting to Server: Kraków_HQ...

A little red icon flashed at the top of the display. NO SERVICE.

I frowned, tapping the screen again to force a hard refresh. "Come on..." I muttered under my breath.

The indicator didn't budge. I stood up and walked toward the massive glass window, holding the phone higher, hoping to catch a stray cell tower signal piercing through the snowstorm. Nothing. I opened the network diagnostics tool, watching the signal bars pulse weakly before collapsing into flatlines.

That was when I noticed the diagnostic telemetry reading on the bottom of the screen.

It wasn't atmospheric drop in signal caused by the blizzard outside. My phone's antenna wasn't searching for a signal it was actively being hammered by a high-frequency wideband noise pulse.

Jaxson’s estate was equipped with a military-spec internal and local signal jammer. The moment I had crossed the threshold of his property, my device had been disconnected.

I wasn't just staying in a luxury estate; I was inside a cage. Jaxson had completely cut me off from the outside world.

I was completely trapped.

I leaned back against the glass, my mind racing as I stared down at the dark screen.

Was he so convinced that I was behind the brace failure,

Suddenly, the phone in my hand buzzed with a sharp, harsh vibration.

I jumped, almost dropping the device on the hardwood floor.

I looked down at the display, my eyebrows furrowing in utter disbelief. In the center of the dark screen, a single notification line was pulsating in bright emerald green a stark contrast to the red NO SERVICE banner still flashing directly above it.

INCOMING ENCRYPTED STREAM: BYPASS PORT 8842

Someone had punched a hole directly through the estate’s internal firewall.

A single, narrow cipher channel had been forced open, riding on a ghost frequency that bypassed Jaxson’s automated network .

Slowly, I swiped the screen to accept the connection.

The display went black for three excruciating seconds. Then, lines of green code began scrolling rapidly across the glass a raw terminal window running a peer-to-peer end-to-end encrypted protocol.

A sender tag materialized at the top of the interface: SENDER: KAJA_KRK.

“Kaja” My lead data analyst and senior lab manager back in krakow, the only person on earth who had access to my private emergency routing keys.

A text string began rendering letter by letter across the screen, generating a raw cipher message:

⁠SIENNA. DO NOT RESPOND VIA VOICE. READ THIS CAREFULLY.⁠

⁠I SAW YOUR DEVICE ENTRY LOGS INTO THE MOUNTAIN GRID. YOU ARE IN DANGER.⁠

My breath hitched in my chest. I typed back rapidly using the terminal keyboard:

⁠Kaja how are you bypassing the estate jammer? Jaxson has a blackout shield up?

The response was almost simultaneous,

⁠

I didn't bypass it from the outside, Sienna. The back-door port 8842 was pre-configured from INSIDE, days before you arrived. Someone on the inside opened a tunnel for us.⁠

My blood ran cold. Inside his network?

⁠What are you talking about?⁠ I typed, my fingers trembling over the keys. ⁠

Who opened it?⁠

Forget that for a second, listen to me,⁠ Kaja’s message flashed onto the screen, the text scrolling faster. You went up to that mountain because you thought Jaxson was unraveling after the trial, right? Because Brownishaw told you Jaxson was destroying the company?

⁠Yes. Brownishaw showed me the leaked medical files.⁠

⁠”IT WAS A SET UP,⁠ Kaja replied, the text bolding in green.”I just cracked the origin timestamp on those leaked medical files. Brownishaw didn't steal them from Jaxson's personal computer. They were uploaded directly from OUR internal clinic database in Kraków using YOUR private codes three nights ago.⁠

I froze, the air leaving my lungs in a sharp gasp.

My codes

⁠”That's impossible,⁠ I typed frantically, ” I never touched those files, I kept his knee surgical records on an offline air gapped drive!⁠

⁠

I know you didn't do it, Sienna,⁠ Kaja’s message appeared. ⁠But someone used your biometric key to frame you.He had been feeding Jaxson forged evidence for weeks proving that YOU were the one leaking his medical records to the press and sabotaging his recovery.⁠

He didn't just suspect me. He had ironclad, forged digital proof that the woman he was beginning to trust the woman staying in his house was the traitor who had ruined his life.

⁠”Sienna, you need to get out of that house NOW,⁠ Kaja’s final message began scrolling across the screen. ⁠He thinks you came there to finish him off. He isn't keeping you there to protect himself...”

Before I could read the whole text, the text on the screen glitched violently, flickering into static.

The green terminal line dissolved, replaced by a single, bold red system command that overrode the entire display:

CONNECTION TERMINATED BY HOST.

USER ACCESS: JAXSON_VANCE (ADMINISTRATOR)

A heavy, quiet click sounded from the far side of my bedroom.

Standing in the shadow of the doorway, was Jaxson,his hand resting on the door, his other hand, held a sleek black tablet displaying the exact same red connection termination screen as my phone.

Suddenly,a loud, heavy electronic bolt slammed shut inside the heavy oak door, locking us inside the room together.

"I was wondering when your little friend in Kraków would try to ping your device," Jaxson said softly, as he slid the tablet into his pocket and took a slow, step toward. "Did she tell you the best part of the story, Sienna... or should I show you myself?"