"Sera, it’s ti for lunch, and I won’t let you skip it, especially after you already skipped breakfast this morning," Corvine’s voice carried from the entrance, calm but unyielding, the kind of steady authority that never needed to be loud to be obeyed, as he stepped inside and adjusted the knot of his tie with a quiet, habitual precision.
The day had dragged on longer than expected, and the maids had filled him in the second he returned ready to drop her at the hospital later, their worried whispers making it clear that she had not moved from that chair for hours.
The glow of Seraphine’s monitors washed the entire room in a cold, electric blue, turning the polished surfaces tallic and the shadows sharp enough to cut, while the soft hum of processors and cooling fans created a chanical heartbeat that felt more alive than the rest of the mansion combined.
Her fingers moved across the keyboard with relentless speed, lines of code cascading down the screens like digital incantations, each command crafted to pry open Daisy’s phone and rip apart whatever secrets she was foolish enough to think were safe.
She had done this so many tis before that it barely registered as a challenge anymore, slipping past firewalls the way other people slipped through unlocked doors, unraveling layers of encryption with patient precision, bending devices to her will until they surrendered without even realizing they had been invaded.
But today, every attempt dissolved into nothing, every exploit returned blank. Every backdoor led to a wall.
She leaned closer to the screen, her brows knitting together as irritation coiled tight in her chest, because Daisy’s phone did not look hacked, manipulated, or hastily wiped, but professionally sterilized, like soone had dismantled it at a molecular level and rebuilt it from scratch without leaving a single fingerprint behind.
No traces of Zane, no ssages hidden in archived folders, no tadata lurking in forgotten corners. Not even a faint digital echo that could hint at a conversation.
For the first ti in a long ti, Seraphine felt sothing she rarely allowed herself to experience, and the sting of it burned sharper than she wanted to admit.
Soone was ahead of her.
"Sera..." Corvine called again, closer now, and she startled slightly before glancing up to see him already inside her room, his presence solid and grounded against the storm brewing in her mind. "How long have you been standing there?"
"Not long," he replied, though his eyes scanned the screens with quiet concern, trying to decipher the chaos of code even if he could not fully understand it.
"But aren’t you supposed to be back at the hospital in the next two hours, and you still haven’t eaten or showered, so unless you’re planning to show up looking like a ghost from a cyber nightmare, I suggest you eat first and then get ready so we can leave on ti."
Seraphine dragged a hand across her temple, frustration tightening her movents as she exhaled slowly, trying to organize the ss in her head into sothing coherent. "Give a few minutes, Corvine, because this isn’t random curiosity or boredom, this is serious."
She expected him to retreat and give her space the way he usually did when she was deep in work, but instead he walked around her desk and leaned slightly against it, folding his arms as if settling in for a long conversation.
"Then share it," he said quietly, his voice softer now, less commanding and more supportive. "I might not have the technical solution you’re looking for, but I can at least carry part of the weight with you."
Her mind raced as she searched for the simplest way to explain sothing that felt layered and risky. "There’s soone covering Daisy’s tracks, and it’s not amateur work or a lucky guess, because this is deliberate and clean and way too precise. I don’t know if she paid soone to do it, or if the person helping her is Zane himself, but if my suspicions are even half right, then our adversary might be more dangerous than we initially thought."
Corvine’s jaw tightened slightly as she continued, her tone asured but edged with growing unease. "Damon told she’s been talking to so guy nad Zane, but he couldn’t get a surna or any solid details, so he asked if I could hack her phone and pull sothing useful. That’s exactly what I’ve been trying to do, but every ti I get close, it’s like soone’s already been there and wiped the slate clean."
She sank back into her chair, staring at the stubborn screen as darker thoughts crept in uninvited, because maybe Daisy was not the one cleaning her ss at all, and maybe Zane had anticipated this from the beginning.
The idea unsettled her more than she liked, because what if Zane was not just so random accomplice hiding behind a first na, but soone like her, soone who understood the system from the inside out and knew how to beco a ghost when necessary?
Perhaps, a secret cyber mind, a phantom in the network, or soone who knew exactly how to disappear.
The silence in the mansion pressed in around them, heavy and suffocating, and for once Seraphine felt the uncomfortable weight of hitting a wall she could not imdiately break through.
"Why not call Damon again," Corvine suggested carefully, watching her expression. "If he can rember anything else about this Zane, even sothing small, it might give you a direction."
She nodded slowly, already thinking along the sa lines. "That’s exactly what I planned to do, but we’ve both been at the pack most of the ti, and there are dozens of people with that na, so how are we supposed to know which one is relevant, and for all we know, he might not even be our pack mber at all."
Corvine frowned, still trying to piece it together. "What I don’t understand is how Daisy suddenly beca smart enough to involve soone like that, because she has never struck as the strategic type."
A faint smile curved Seraphine’s lips, though there was no warmth behind it, only a cold glimr of irony. "Maybe sending her sex video viral knocked so sense into her after all, because humiliation can be a powerful teacher when survival is on the line."
She reached for her phone and dialed Damon’s number, pressing it to her ear while the call rang unanswered, and a small spark of suspicion flared in her chest when it went to silence without a response.
If Daisy was with him, then that explained it, and if she was not, then sothing else was moving behind the scenes.
Instead of stewing in irritation, Seraphine finally pushed back her chair and joined Corvine for lunch, though her mind remained miles away from the food in front of her, running through possibilities and worst-case scenarios as she forced herself to take a few bites.
When she stepped into the shower afterward, the hot water cascaded down her shoulders, washing away the surface tension in her muscles but doing nothing to ease the pressure building behind her eyes.
Even there, with steam curling around her and the world muted to the sound of running water, her thoughts circled back to Zane and the unsettling realization that she might not be the only one capable of playing this ga at a professional level.
Her phone rang sowhere in the bedroom while she was still under the water, but she let it ring out, unwilling to step out dripping and half-dressed for a conversation she needed to handle properly.
The second she finished and wrapped herself in a towel, she grabbed her phone and saw Damon’s missed call, and without hesitating she redialed, her jaw set and her mind already made up.
He answered quickly this ti, the line connecting with a faint rustle, but before he could even greet her, she cut in, her voice steady yet laced with unmistakable authority.
"Damon," she said, each word thoughtful and controlled, "change of plans."
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