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They couldn’t.

The board was already circling, the launch was too close, and every hour away from SOLAÉ felt like another opening I was leaving unguarded.

My phone buzzes on the counter outside the shower. I ignore the first vibration, then the second. By the third, the sound has become too deliberate to dismiss. I kill the water, wrap a towel around my waist, and step out.

The screen is still lit when I pick it up.

INTERNAL ALERT — PROTOTYPE V FILES ACCESSED 03:07 AM.

Cold slides through the heat still clinging to my skin.

Prototype V contains the final encrypted files for the launch, so no one outside the executive team should even know exist. The wrong file in the wrong hands could bury SOLAÉ before launch and hand Obsidian everything Adrian has spent years trying to take from me.

Another message appears before I can open the security dashboard.

TRACE PATH — ACTIVE MIRROR DETECTED. EXTERNAL IP GEOLOCATES TO SAN FRANCISCO. PROTOCOL CONFIRMED.

My mind races through the possibilities of an active hacker. Maybe they spoofed a trusted device, making the system see a ghost. It can disguise a scheduled transfer—a digital bomb planted hours ago, waiting for a remote trigger.

A third message follows.

USER TOKEN: S.HARPER-EXE

DEVICE AUTHENTICATION: VERIFIED

ACCESS LEVEL: EXECUTIVE ASSISTANT

Sloane’s credentials?

Another notification appears. This time, it's a message from an unknown number.

UNKNOWN

Funny how the perfect woman walked into your life just as SOLAÉ was preparing its biggest launch.

Beautiful. Intelligent. Exactly what you needed. And somehow, she went from a stranger to someone with unrestricted access to your company, your home, and your bed.

You built an empire by questioning everyone's motives, Nathaniel.

Why did you stop questioning hers?

I read the message twice, my attention returning to that final question. Whoever sent it knew exactly which doubts to exploit, and the timing was too deliberate to ignore.

I love her. That doesn't mean I can afford to ignore her name in those logs .

Walking back into the room, my gaze settles on Sloane. Three hours ago she had one leg tangled with mine and her cheek pressed to my chest and at no point did I feel her slip out of bed.

So that rules out physical access. My mind reminds me. It does not rule out a scheduled command, a remote trigger, or work completed hours earlier.

My first instinct is to wake her, to search her face for the truth before she can hide it. Part of me wants to believe whatever answer she gives, but the part that built SOLAÉ cannot afford to.

But doing that means confessing that I chose to keep her in the dark when she asked me to be honest and not hide things from her.

So I do what I always do when something threatens what is mine.

I gather the information, narrow the variables, and decide how much anyone else is allowed to see.

I once trusted the wrong person with too much and it almost cost me everything.