Chapter 2 A Virus Named 'Ex-Boyfriend

          The atmosphere inside the executive boardroom on the thirtieth floor was thick with tension. The air conditioning was set to a brisk twenty-two degrees Celsius, leaving several employees discreetly rubbing their arms for warmth. Yet for Lalita Preedakul, the top-tier PR maven tasked with presenting a multi-billion-baht fundraising project today, her body felt entirely different. It was practically pumping with the scorching heat of an adrenaline rush.

She stepped into the boardroom exuding absolute confidence. Her voluminous, golden-brown curls were styled to perfection. Her plump lips, coated in her signature brick-orange hue, curved into a flawless greeting for the senior executives as they filed into their seats. Her form-fitting V-neck dress was elegant and professional, yet undeniably sexy in true Lita fashion. It did a spectacular job of drawing every eye in the room.

Everything was perfect. That was, until her sharp gaze collided with the tall, commanding figure sitting in the deepest corner of the room by the audiovisual control panel.

Bhakin was dressed far more formally than he had been an hour ago. Every button on his pristine dress shirt was fastened, a dark tie was knotted with precision, and the sleeves that had previously been rolled up were now smoothed down and immaculately cuffed. He was the IT department's designated representative, here to control the presentation slides and manage the security network for this top-secret meeting.

When his eyes locked onto hers, the piercing gaze behind his clear lenses betrayed absolutely no emotion. It was completely flat. Yet, Lita felt a jolt of electricity zip straight down her spine. The memory of him leaning in so close that their noses almost brushed just tens of minutes ago was still blazing fresh in her mind.

'Please take good care of your laptop. Because if there's a problem next time... I might not just come to fix the machine.'

That low, husky voice still echoed in her ears. She quickly snapped her head away, feigning intense focus as she pulled her laptop out and arranged her documents on the table. Anything to hide the flush of crimson rapidly spreading across her cheeks.

"Alright, everyone, take your seats," the CEO's voice boomed, shattering the silence in the room. "The representative from our VIP client has arrived. We need to give it our all today. This project dictates the entire final quarter for our company."

The heavy wooden doors swung open. An absurdly expensive men's cologne—a heavy blend of leather and dark wood—wafted into the room before the man himself even appeared.

Lita didn't look up immediately. She was busy clicking her mouse, opening the presentation file she had painstakingly salvaged thanks to the 'stoic guy' sitting nearby.

"Good afternoon, Mr. CEO. I apologize for keeping you waiting." A deep, resonant, and sickeningly familiar voice echoed through the center of the boardroom.

Lita froze. Her slender fingers stiffened over the mouse as if she had been turned to stone. Her heart, which had been beating at a normal rhythm, violently lurched and dropped straight into her stomach.

Slowly, sluggishly, she lifted her head to follow the voice. The very second her eyes collided with the visitor's face, it felt as though someone had slammed the pause button on her entire world.

Krit.

The tall, striking man was dressed in a world-class bespoke suit. The clean-cut, handsome face she was once so deeply familiar with now looked older, more powerful, and utterly dripping with arrogance. The smile playing on the corner of his lips was exactly the same. It was the same smile that had once made her fall madly in love with him. And it was the exact same smile that had ripped her heart to shreds.

'Lita, I'm sorry. But love alone doesn't put food on the table. She has everything I need to push me into an executive role. I have to marry her. We're done.'

That incredibly selfish, cold-blooded breakup speech from years ago echoed in her mind like a broken record.

Lita's eyes widened, her breath catching in her throat. The slender hand resting on the table trembled so violently that she quickly snatched it back, hiding it beneath the desk. She clenched her fist so hard her red gel nails dug agonizingly into her skin.

The ex-boyfriend who had dumped her to marry a richer woman for business benefits... today, he reappeared right in front of her as the VIP client holding the fate of a billion-baht project in his hands.

Krit greeted the other executives before his gaze snapped to the slender figure sitting deathly pale at the head of the presentation table. A flash of surprise crossed his eyes for a fraction of a second. It was immediately replaced by a look of sheer satisfaction and unconcealed, hungry desire.

"I didn't expect to run into a familiar face here," Krit remarked. The corner of his mouth lifted in a calculating smirk. His eyes raked over Lita's body from head to toe with brazen audacity. "You look absolutely stunning, Khun Lalita. You've grown up quite a bit since back then."

That sentence caused the entire boardroom to turn and stare at Lita as one. The CEO raised an eyebrow in surprise.

"Oh? You and Khun Lita know each other? What a coincidence."

"We do. In fact, we know each other very intimately," Krit said, deliberately emphasizing the word 'intimately' as he shot a suggestive wink at her.

That highly suggestive remark made Lita's face go numb. It felt like she had just been slapped hard across the face in the middle of the boardroom. Humiliation and blinding rage surged up, choking her throat. The armor of confidence she had painstakingly built over the years to protect herself was crashing down just because this malware walked into the room.

"We went to the same university, Mr. CEO," Lita said, desperately trying to keep her voice from shaking. She tilted her chin up, meeting Krit's gaze with the emptiest, most detached look she could muster. "But it was so long ago that I can barely remember it."

Krit chuckled softly in his throat, completely unfazed by her jab. He walked over to the VIP seat, draping both arms over the backrest with the absolute swagger of a victor.

"Then I'm looking forward to it even more. Let's see if your presentation today is as... impressive as the other things we've done together in the past."

It was a blatant declaration of psychological warfare.

Lita stood up. Her legs were shaking so badly she could barely balance. She picked up the laser pointer with ice-cold hands, trying to take deep breaths to claw back her professionalism. But her brain was completely blank. The agonizing memories she had buried deep in her heart had just been violently dug up to torture her.

And while Lita was busy battling the demons inside her own head, in the corner of the boardroom, a pair of piercing eyes behind clear lenses was quietly analyzing every single detail of the unfolding scene.

Bhakin hadn't taken his eyes off her striking face—now pale as a sheet of paper—for even a second.

As the Head of IT, an expert at assessing risks and detecting system flaws, he could see the vulnerabilities in Lita with crystal clarity.

The woman who normally hid behind a sassy, hot-girl persona, handing out dazzling smiles and tilting her chin to challenge him every time they met—her firewall was cracking. She was trying to hide her trembling hands behind her back, blinking rapidly to fend off a breach of unshed tears.

Who was that guy? And why the hell did he have the power to reduce a wildly arrogant woman like Lalita to this state?

Bhakin shot a deadly glare at the VIP client named Krit. An inexplicable surge of dark frustration spiked in his chest. The way that bastard looked at Lita was the look of someone who thought he owned her. It was thirsty, brazen, and so utterly repulsive that Bhakin felt his knuckles itch. He had the overwhelming urge to march over, grab the collar of that expensive suit, and physically hurl the malware out of the room.

This wasn't a normal operational state for him. Bhakin knew it. He had never cared about his employees' personal lives. He couldn't care less about anyone's past. But with this woman—the disruptive virus who loved to mess with his nervous system—he felt fiercely protective. He absolutely could not stand seeing her get bullied.

"You may begin your presentation, Khun Lita," the CEO's voice cut through his thoughts.

Lita jolted. She opened the first slide, starting the project overview with a voice she desperately fought to keep steady. But Krit refused to make things easy for her. He intentionally raised his hand to interrupt, firing off invasive questions to corner her. Worse, he constantly laced his words with suggestive double entendres just to mess with her head.

"I think these numbers aren't quite exciting enough, Lita," Krit used her nickname with blatant intimacy. "I remember you being much more 'creative' and 'fiery' in the past. Or has the passage of time made your working style so dull?"

Lita bit her lip so hard she tasted blood. His words stabbed so deeply that she almost burst into tears right there in the boardroom. The hand holding the laser pointer dropped. She was completely drained, having no energy left to fight this man.

SCREEEEECH!!

Suddenly, microphone feedback shrieked through the boardroom at an ear-piercingly high frequency.

Every single executive jumped out of their skin, some throwing their hands over their ears. Krit, who had just been basking in his own arrogant glory, looked utterly stunned, his smug executive facade slipping completely.

Lita blinked in shock, looking around the room before her eyes locked onto the tall figure standing at the control panel.

Bhakin's expression was flawlessly stoic. He pressed a button on the audio mixer with a fingertip before speaking up, his deep, authoritative voice slicing right through the chaos in the room.

"My apologies, Mr. CEO. It appears the mobile signal of 'someone' in this room interfered with my audio reception system, causing a frequency clash."

Bhakin's piercing eyes flicked deliberately toward Krit, glaring at him with absolute ice.

"I ask that all meeting participants please turn off your communication devices. And kindly refrain from using language unrelated to the work at hand. The audio sensors in this room are highly sensitive to 'irrelevant' noise."

The boardroom fell dead silent like a graveyard. No one dared utter a single word. The pressure radiating from the stoic Head of IT was so terrifyingly heavy that even the CEO had to cough lightly to break the awkward tension.

Krit lost his composure. He ground his jaw tight, feeling profoundly humiliated at being indirectly roasted by a mere department head in front of everyone. But he couldn't throw a fit because the guy had conveniently blamed it on technical systems.

Bhakin didn't care at all about the VIP client's murderous glare. He snapped his gaze back to Lita, who was standing frozen at the front of the room. He looked deep into her trembling, wide eyes, transmitting a clear command through his gaze alone.

'Reboot your system. And get your job done.'

Just by meeting those piercing eyes, a strange sense of warmth and courage flowed back into Lita's system. The deadpan guy who had so coldly rejected her was now the only one extending a hand—or rather, a system override—to pull her out of the abyss of her past at her most vulnerable second.

She straightened her spine, pulling a deep, lung-filling breath. The armor of the top-tier PR queen booted back up, fully restored.

"I apologize for the technical glitch," Lita flashed her most flawless, stunning professional smile right back at Krit. "To avoid wasting your precious time, Khun Krit, let's dive deeper into those performance figures you found so 'dull.' I guarantee they'll be 'fiery' enough to make you sweat."

The presentation proceeded intensely. Lita took complete control of the game. She parried every single one of Krit's questions with rock-solid data and razor-sharp rhetoric. By the end, every executive in the room was nodding in absolute admiration. Even Krit couldn't find a single flaw to exploit to bully her anymore.

When the long meeting finally concluded, the executives began filtering out of the room. Lita let out a long sigh of relief. She closed her file and prepared to pack up her laptop. However, heavy footsteps marched over and halted right in front of her desk.

"You've gotten a lot better, Lita."

Krit spoke up. His tone wasn't as provocative as it had been during the meeting. Instead, it was layered with a pleading undertone.

"I was deeply impressed seeing this side of you."

"The job is done. Excuse me," she replied coldly, not even bothering to look up at him.

"Wait, Lita." Krit reached out, forcefully grabbing her slender wrist. Lita jolted, trying to yank it away, but he only tightened his grip. "I just divorced my wife. I'm a free man now. Let's go back to how we were..."

Thud!!

A heavy object slammed onto the table with such force that both Krit and Lita whipped their heads around.

Bhakin Siraprapawong stood right there, his face as cold and unyielding as an ice sculpture. The black toolbox had been deliberately slammed onto Lita's desk. The tall man stepped right between the two of them with a fluid motion that was laced with lethal, undisguised threat.

"Excuse me."

Bhakin's tone was dead flat, but the piercing eyes behind his clear lenses were staring murderously at Krit's hand gripping Lita's wrist. His glare was so violently cold that Krit instinctively released her hand.

Bhakin smoothly shifted his body, shielding Lita's slender figure completely behind him. He then turned to face the VIP client with a wickedly dangerous smirk playing at the corner of his mouth.

"I need to collect the equipment and run a diagnostic check on the connection ports of Khun Lalita's laptop. Right now."

He placed a heavy, authoritative emphasis on 'right now.' He tilted his head slightly, looking down at Krit with an air of absolute superiority.

"I must ask you, Mr. Client, to kindly step the hell out of our employee's 'personal space'."

The boardroom, which was already cold, instantly plummeted to bone-chilling temperatures. The real psychological warfare had only just begun. And it seemed the Head of IT's security protocols had just received a massive upgrade—locking him straight into ultimate possessive mode.