BLEEDING LOYALTY
He picked up the cryptographic tablet, his large, calloused fingers gripping its sleek edges, before setting it back down with a sharp, metallic clatter that made my jump.
"You're a brilliant architect, pani accountant," Magnus said, his voice dropping into that low, gravelly register that seemed to wrap directly around my ribs and squeeze. He finally turned his head, his cold hazel eyes fixing entirely on me with an unsettling, terrifying calm. "I'll give you that. When my tech team tried to force a brute-force decryption on this server backup in Zurich, your security protocols wiped half the financial records and locked the remaining files behind a recursive dead-man's switch."