Chapter 118

The alarm pierced the quiet like a slap.

Sutton jolted, blinking hard as the sound cut back to the here and now with brutal clarity.

the thick fog in her head. The noise wasn’t deafening, but it was sharp and urgent. It snapped her

Saved by the bell.

She looked over Luca’s shoulder toward her

rworkstati

the red light flashing on the security panel.

“Shit,” she muttered.

Luca stood quickly, already alert, already all business again. But when he turned to look at her, there was something softer lingering in his eyes. Something that she had never seen in him before.

“You okay?” he asked.

Sutton nodded, even though her body ached and her thighs still felt shaky. “Yeah. Just… give me a second.”

She pulled her dress down as best she could and stood slowly, ignoring the dull ache that followed. Her underwear was gone. Didn’t matter. Her limbs were jelly, her head still going over everything that had passed between them. She moved toward her desk and silenced the alarm.

The screen lit up.

System breach alert.

Her heart stuttered.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” she

breath

“What is it?” Luca asked, already moving in beside her.

She didn’t answer right away. Her fingers were flying across the keyboard now, checking logs, cross–referencing data, scanning for the entry point.

“It’s not a breach,” she said finall

“It’s an internal trigger I set up without anyone knowing to monitor tampering attempts on the server.” Her jaw tightened. “Someone just tried to wipe a backup file connected to Kingston.”

Luca’s expression hardened. “From inside the building?”

Sutton nodded once. “Yeah.

From a secured login.”

His voice dropped. “Nicole?

”

“I don’t k know yet. But it wouldn’t surprise me… Like you said, we need proof and I’m going to get that proof. That’s why I set up the trigger.” She glanced up at him. He didn’t expect her to do it without telling him. “But at a guess, we are going to get answers faster than I thought. Bold.”

“I didn’t want to keep secrets,” she said, “but I couldn’t risk her getting away with it. I also didn’t want anyone to hear I was doing it.”

Luca didn’t argue. He didn’t get upset. He just stood there, jaw clenched, staring at the monitor. “If it is Nicole, I have to say this has to be very upsetting. She has been with me for years, but there is no coming back from this.”

“Right now, I need to trace the IP and pull the access log,” Sutton said, already sliding into her chair. “You might want to lock down executive–level credentials while I do. Maybe lock everyone out of the system, including the development team. Just allow us to have control. If everyone’s locked out, Nicole won’t get suspicious.”

Luca nodded slowly, then looked at her… Sutton flushed. She knew how she looked, hair mussed, lips still pink, her skin still glowing from everything that had happened minutes ago.

He hesitated.

“Sutton.”

She didn’t stop typing.

“I meant what I said. About marrying)

She paused, hands hovering over the keyboard. Her chest ached, full and tight.

“I heard you,” she said quietly. “But right now, we’ve got other things to worry about. Get working, boss.”

Luca nodded and moved to one of the other stations.

Sutton’s fingers flew across the keyboard, getting to work.

The world narrowed to code, to backdoors, to the need to solve this puzzle. Soon, there was no trace of emotion left on her face. Just focus.

Luca went to work doing his job. It didn’t take long.

“System is locked down,” he confirmed behind her, reading over her shoulder. “Only you and me have access right now.”

“Good,” she muttered, already rerouting the logs.

Lines of code scrolled fast. She bypassed their internal audit tools, tapping straight into the raw feeds. No interfaces. No Ul. Just code.

She was done being subtle.

The trigger she’d embedded had worked… someone had tried to delete backup files tied to Kingston’s contract. They’d failed. But that didn’t matter now. What mattered was who.

Sutton cracked open the internal IP logs and copied the identifier. Then she opened a separate terminal.

“You’re hacking the cameras?” Luca asked. “Fuck, Sutton. I’m glad you’re on my team.”

She turned to grin at him before turning back to her computer. “I’m cross–referencing badge data with security footage,” she said, not looking away. “They logged in from the third floor east end of the building. We’re going to see exactly who was in that room.”

She typed fast, tracing the IP addres

s of

terminal used.

It pinged. She rerouted.

And the feed opened.

The footage flickered, then played. Grainy black and white, time–stamped, just past 3:12 a.m.

Sutton leaned in. There she was, Nicole. Just as she had thought. But she wasn’t alone.

Sutton couldn’t see who the person was beside her. Sutton could tell the person was a man, but he was wearing a hoodie. His face wasn’t visible, but the security badge he had used to get into the building flashed on her second screen.

Sutton froze. Then looked back at the man. No, it wasn’t him. This man was larger.

“Shit,” she whispered. “He used Jake’s b

Luca’s jaw tightened. “That’s not Jake.”

badge.”

“I know this man is a lot larger than Jake Sutton agreed. They watched as Nicole handed something to the man…a drive? A phone? It was quick.

“He’s doing the actual deletion,” Sutton said. “She’s just… standing there. Watching.”

Luca was silent for a long beat.

“She’s not just trying to sabotage Kingston,” Sutton said, her voice low. “She’s trying to burn the whole company down. Just to get rid of me.

”

He didn’t argue.

He knew.

“Can you trace the keystrokes?” he asked finally.

“I already did.” Sutton pulled up another terminal. “I installed a keylogger in the sandbox after the last attempt. Every keystroke on that terminal is being recorded. Every command, every deletion, every fucking typo. I’ve got it all.”

She copied the keystroke data and matched it to the timestamp.

“There,” she pointed. “You see that string? That’s the script that wipes the Kingston cloud backups. But I blocked the second stage. So it failed. And now we’ve got the full attempt.”

Luca stared at the screen. Then at her.

“This is everything we need,” she said. “Proof. Intent. Physical access. Complicity. What they don’t know, I have already copied Kingston files under another file name on our servers, so if this works, it’s only going to take me tomorrow to fix their system.”

“When did you do that?”

Sutton shrugged. “After the first attempt.”

She opened a folder on her side panel and dragged the camera footage into it.

“I’m saving all of it. On an encrypted drive. If you want to press charges-” she glanced at him “-we’ll have everything ready.”

Luca ran a hand through his hair. He looked like he wanted to punch something. Or someone.

“She really thought she could do this,” he said. “To me. To the company. To you.”

“She still thinks she’s smarter than everyone else,” Sutton said. “But she didn’t count on me watching her from the inside.”

Silence.

Then Luca said, quietly, “Thank you.”

She looked up. Grinning. “It was fun.”

Luca laughed. “Your idea of fun is very different to mine.”

Sutton swallowed. “I’m not done yet.”

She cracked her knuckles. Turned back to the screen.

“Now I’m going to find out who he is.”