Semua Bab Cold As My Heart: Bab 1 - Bab 9

The glass doors of CainTech closed with a hiss behind her. Silence swallowed the lobby no chatter, no phones ringing, no receptionist. Just polished marble, matte black walls, and a tension that wrapped around Sera Vaughn’s ribs like invisible wire.He was here.Her fingers tightened around the leather strap of her bag as she stepped into the elevator. Her heartbeat had no right to be this fast. Not just from nerves. From recognition.The man she was about to meet wasn’t just a billionaire tech giant.He was a ghost.She’d seen his face once before.On a missing person’s poster.The elevator climbed with mechanical smoothness, no music, no sound. Sera stared at her reflection in the mirrored interior. Red lipstick, perfect. Hair pinned, no trace of the shaking hands or the storm in her gut. She was here under contract, assigned to counsel CainTech employees after a suicide scandal rocked the company.But that wasn’t the real reason she took this job.The doors slid open.A tall woman

The screen was dead.So was every lead.Adrian stared at the smoking laptop like it had just spoken his true name and choked on it. The flash drive lay in the middle of the desk, still warm, metal casing scorched. Data vaporized in seconds.“Someone was watching,” Sera whispered.“No,” he said flatly. “Someone was waiting.”He grabbed the drive, wrapped it in a napkin from the mini bar, and locked it in the office safe. Evidence or not, he wasn’t ready to destroy it.“Are there any backups?” she asked.He gave a hollow laugh. “I kept the only copy off-network. Thought it was safe.”“You thought wrong.”He looked at her then. Really looked.Sera’s hair was falling out of its clip, her lipstick faded, eyes red from too many shocks in too little time. But she stood tall. Fierce. Beautiful in a way that had nothing to do with grace and everything to do with her refusal to flinch.And for the first time in years, he felt something stir in his chest that wasn’t ice.Guilt.“You were in that

He couldn't breathe.The moment the video cut off, something inside him buckled.Not from fear.From recognition.The basement in the live feed wasn’t just any room it was the room.The one from his nightmares. The one with the cold tile floor, and the smell of metal, and the screaming that had never stopped echoing in the back of his skull.He’d drawn it a hundred times as a kid, in charcoal and pen and blood before Dorian made him burn every sketch.He’d stood in that room as a boy and forgotten his name.And now they were sending it back to him.Like a trigger. A test.A threat.He slammed the laptop shut and turned to find Sera already pacing the living room, her arms crossed tight against her chest.“They want you to remember,” she said. “They’re trying to speed up your recovery.”“It’s not recovery,” he muttered. “It’s… exposure. They’re unraveling me.”Her eyes locked on his. “Then stop them.”He laughed, bitter and cold. “You don’t stop a machine like this, Sera. You just hope

The dim lights of the penthouse flickered as Adrian stood at the window, his cold stare cutting through the rain-slicked glass. Below, the city stretched out like a sea of lights, unfeeling and distant much like the man he had become. Sera’s voice echoed in his mind. Her words: "I’ll find out what happened, Adrian. No matter what."He didn’t want to be found out. But something about her defied every instinct to shut her out. The pull between them raw, intense, and undeniably magnetic was a force neither of them had the power to deny.Sera stepped into the room, her footsteps light but steady. She looked at him, her eyes flicking between the sharp angles of his face and the tortured expression he tried so hard to mask. Her presence had become a constant in his life, an unsettling comfort. But she was also a threat, the one person who could unlock the door to his past."I need answers, Adrian," she said, her voice firm but low, the words slipping past the walls he’d built around himself

Adrian’s hands shook as he read the message again, the words almost taunting him now.You don’t know who’s really behind this, but you will soon. Sera isn’t who she says she is.His throat tightened. He shoved the phone back into his pocket, but the words lingered in his mind, gnawing at him like a persistent itch that couldn’t be scratched. He turned to look at Sera, but she was already watching him, her eyes wide, searching his face for some kind of reaction.“You’re not part of this, are you?” Adrian’s voice was hoarse, barely a whisper. His breath caught in his throat as he met her gaze. “You’re not working with him. With any of them.”The moment he spoke, the room seemed to close in around them. The tension was thick, heavy, unbearable.Sera took a slow step toward him, her body language hesitant but determined. “Adrian, I swear ” Her voice cracked, and she had to stop herself. “I swear to you, I’m not part of whatever this is. I don’t know who’s sending those messages, but I kno