THE MAFIA DON'S DEBT

The whispers of a entire nation were the last things that broke her.

In her past life, Elena hadn’t just been a successful programmer; she was a national icon. As one of the very few female tech CEOs in the country, her face had been on every business magazine cover. She had built a tech startup from scratch and turned it into a Unicorn company worth over a billion dollars. Because of her rare status in a male-dominated industry, the media watched her every move.

She thought she had it all—fame, brilliance, and a devoted suitor named Julian who publicly chased her with grand, romantic gestures, making the public swoon over his devotion to the nation's tech goddess.

But her fame became her execution dock.

Julian and her stepsister, Chloe, played a sickening, long game. Once Julian secured her trust, they manipulated Elena into signing a Power of Attorney under the guise of "protecting her assets from corporate rivals." The moment the ink was dry, they stripped her of her own empire.

To ensure she could never fight back, Chloe began secretly slipping heavy sedatives into her drinks. While Elena was trapped in a drug-induced fog, they staged incriminating photos of her in hotel rooms with random men.

Because Elena was a famous female public figure, the media turned on her savagely. The headlines were brutal: The Fall of the Tech Empress: Elena’s Secret, Wild Nightlife Exposed. The cyberbullying was nationwide and relentless. Hated by the public who once idolized her, stripped of her life's work, and gaslit into believing she was losing her sanity, Elena couldn't take the nightmare anymore. She swallowed a lethal dose of pills, closing her eyes as the internet celebrated the destruction of a "lying cheat."

Gasp!

Elena choked, her eyes flying open as she bolted upright.

There was no burning in her chest. No hospital room. Instead, her fingers were resting on the mechanical keys of her desktop computer. The sharp blue light of three monitors illuminated her bedroom, displaying the core architecture of her startup’s network.

She checked the bottom right corner of her screen. October 14, 2024.

Elena’s breath hitched. She was back.

She was back to the year her company was just hitting its stride—and crucially, before she ever fell for Julian's traps. Right now, Julian was still just an ambitious guy desperately trying to court her, and Chloe was just beginning to drop her subtle hints to the public.

Right on cue, her bedroom door clicked open. Chloe walked in, holding a fresh glass of orange juice.

"Elena, sweetie, you've been coding all night," Chloe said, setting the glass down with a sweet, innocent smile. "Oh, by the way... Julian called me again. He’s so deeply in love with you, Elena. He's coming to your office tomorrow with lunch just to see your face. Everyone at university and in the news is already saying how lucky you are to have a man chasing you like that. You shouldn't keep him waiting."

There it was. The setup. In her past life, Elena had been flattered by Julian's public pursuit, thinking it was true love. Now, she saw it for what it was: a calculated move to build his "patient, loving partner" image before they destroyed her reputation on a national stage.

"Leave the juice. I'll drink it later," Elena said, her voice completely devoid of emotion.

The moment Chloe left, Elena's expression turned ice-cold. She poured a sample of the orange juice into a small cosmetic vial and hid it away. The poison stops here.

Julian wanted to chase her? Chloe wanted to use her national fame to ruin her? Elena let out a sharp, dangerous laugh. This time, she wasn't going to play defensive. To protect her status as a female tech icon, she needed a shield so massive that no power of attorney, no media outlet, and no family member could ever touch her or her company again. She needed the ultimate surname. She needed Ethan Vance.

Elena’s fingers flew across her keyboard with lethal, practiced precision. For the past week, she had been analyzing a secret vulnerability in Vance Global's upcoming multi-billion-dollar AI security infrastructure. Tonight, she exploited it.

With a few flawless lines of code, she bypassed the elite firewalls of the country's most ruthless tech titan, planting an encrypted, un-deletable digital countdown clock right on Ethan Vance’s personal, top-secure desktop.

The timer on her screen read: 12:00:00.

Elena smiled into the dark room, the green reflection of the clock glowing in her eyes.

"Tick-tock, Mr. Vance. Let's see how much your empire is worth to you."