Sophie threw herself into the work, determined to prove she belonged in this place that moved at the speed of Alex Wolf's ambition.
She gathered lists of contractors, traced project names, and sent discreet emails to the legal team, careful never to copy too many people. Her notebook quickly filled with names, dates, and scattered arrows that only she could follow.
Yet every fifteen minutes — sometimes less — Alex interrupted.
"Carter, get me the latest market data."
"Carter, reschedule the call with Shanghai."
"Carter, who approved this vendor?"
"Carter—"
Each interruption pulled her from her investigation like a sudden slap, forcing her to switch gears, then scramble to remember where she'd left off.
By noon, frustration simmered under her skin. Her head throbbed from constant context switching, and she could almost hear the accusation forming in Alex's mind if she Ms. ed a single detail: You're not fast enough.
Yet each time she turned to him, his dark eyes were already focused elsewhere, as if he barely noticed her annoyance. It made it worse somehow — to feel invisible and indispensable all at once.
He doesn't realize he's slowing me down, she told herself, though a sharper voice in her mind whispered: Or maybe he does.
Just as she began typing up a summary of suspicious vendors, his low voice cut through the silence.
"Come on, Carter," Alex ordered, suddenly standing in front of her desk and her not noticing it, "We're having lunch in the cafeteria."
She blinked, startled. "Sorry — what?"
He finally met her gaze, a faint impatience tightening the corners of his mouth. "You need to eat. And I need to be seen."
Before she could ask what being seen meant, he was already walking away, jacket in hand. She scrambled to follow, closing her notebook with a quiet snap.
The company cafeteria turned out to be far from what she'd pictured.
Instead of plastic trays and harsh lighting, it had floor-to-ceiling windows spilling in natural light, polished wood tables, and a discreet hum of conversation. Potted plants added warmth to the sleek space, and uniformed staff moved efficiently behind a glass counter of fresh dishes.
Yet it wasn't the room itself that made Sophie's pulse quicken — it was the heads turning as Alex walked in. Conversations paused. Eyes flicked from him to her and back again, curiosity plain on every face.
Some of the glances were polite. Others were colder, appraising. And a few — especially from a cluster of sharply dressed junior executives — carried open speculation that made her throat tighten.
Alex seemed utterly unmoved by the scrutiny. He walked to a table near the windows and claimed it with the quiet certainty of someone who had never needed perMs. ion.
Sophie trailed behind, conscious of every step, every sideways glance. She couldn't decide what was worse: the curiosity of strangers or the knowledge that by merely sitting beside Alex Wolf, she had become part of the rumor mill.
They settled into their seats, and a server approached. Alex ordered without looking at the menu; Sophie hurried to follow suit, barely remembering what she asked for.
For a moment, silence stretched between them, filled only by the clink of cutlery and distant murmurs. Sophie caught sight of two women at a nearby table whispering behind their hands, eyes darting toward her.
Her cheeks heated. They're wondering who I am. Why I'm here.
Alex seemed to notice her discomfort. "Ignore them," he said flatly, his gaze steady on her. "People always watch. Especially when they're bored."
She swallowed. "Doesn't it bother you?"
"No," he said, as if the idea were foreign. "It only matters if you let it shape what you do next."
His bluntness stole her breath for a second — but also steadied her.
As their meals arrived, Sophie tried to focus on the food, though her mind kept circling back to the data leak. Should I ask him about next steps? Should I wait?
But before she could speak, Alex's phone buzzed. He checked it, brow furrowing slightly, then set it aside. "After lunch, keep digging," he instructed, his voice low enough only she could hear. "I want preliminary names by this afternoon."
She nodded, her frustration momentarily softened by the trust his words implied.
Still, a small part of her rebelled. Does he see me as a person or only as a tool?
Lunch ended quickly, the plates whisked away by the attentive staff. As they stood to leave, Sophie felt the weight of dozens of eyes again — but this time, Alex's presence beside her made it slightly easier to bear.
She followed him back through the corridors of glass and steel, notebook in hand, pulse quickening at the thought of what waited: secrets to uncover, lines to trace, and somewhere at the end of it all, a truth that might ruin or save more than one empire.
Yet one thought burned brightest in her mind: He trusts me to find it. And I can't let him down.
Back at her desk, Sophie's mind worked furiously, her fingers dancing across the keyboard as she scoured every public document she could legally access. The quarterly updates from Vanessa's firm were glossy and carefully curated, but buried within them were footnotes and vague financial disclosures that caught her eye.
She couldn't see internal invoices from Vanessa's firm — those were far beyond her clearance — but she noted odd spikes in "referrals to several appendix addendum" listed under the broadest possible categories: strategic realignment, compliance reviews, market research. It was flimsy, circumstantial at best, but Sophie couldn't ignore the pattern.
She started a timeline in her notebook, sketching arrows and question marks, building a rough map of quarterly changes. Her heart raced at the thought: Could this be where the leak is hidden?
Then, halfway through the latest quarterly update, Sophie noticed something she'd Ms. ed before: a short hyperlink at the bottom of a footnote labeled "See appendix addendum Q3–Internal Review Summary."
Curious, she clicked.
For a split second, a browser window opened. Then the screen froze.
A flashing warning appeared:
"MALICIOUS FILE DETECTED: SYSTEM INTRUSION – BACKDOOR TROJAN"
Her breath caught. The mouse wouldn't respond. Numbers and lines of code scrambled across the screen, and the cursor jerked wildly before vanishing altogether.
"No, no, no, no, no…" she whispered, pressing keys uselessly. The virus spread faster than she could react, eating through her open documents until the entire display turned black, then restarted in a flickering loop.
Sophie's hands trembled on the keyboard. The timeline she'd been building, her notes, everything — wiped away or corrupted.
Panic rose in her chest like cold water. Did someone plant that link on purpose? For the first time since she'd started, Sophie felt the real danger of what she was doing: this wasn't just numbers and footnotes — it was a war, and someone on the other side was ready to fight and maybe steal information.
She forced herself to take a breath, even as her computer screen blinked helplessly back to life, empty and clean — as if she'd never been there at all.
Now what? she thought, her pulse still pounding.
She glanced toward Alex's office, her decision already forming. He needs to know about this — even if it means admitting that I made a mistake.
Heart pounding, Sophie rose from her chair, ignoring the curious glance of a passing colleague. The corridor to Alex's office felt longer than usual, each step echoing the tension that coiled tighter in her chest.
She hesitated outside his door, gathering the nerve. He has to know — even if he's furious I was digging where I shouldn't.
She knocked lightly, her knuckles almost betraying her with a tremor.
"Come in," came Alex's voice, low and distracted.
Sophie pushed the door open and stepped inside. He was standing by the tall windows, phone in hand, a frown creasing his brow as if he'd been deep in thought. His gaze snapped to her, sharp as ever, taking in her anxious posture immediately.
"Yes?" His tone was clipped, guarded.
"I—I need to tell you something," she began, her voice catching. "It's about the data leak."
Alex's eyes narrowed, and he placed the phone face down on his desk. "What about it?"
"I don't have access to your internal systems," Sophie rushed on, her words tumbling out. "So I've been looking at public quarterly reports, trying to map out unusual expenses linked to Vanessa's firm."
His jaw tightened slightly, but he stayed silent, letting her continue.
"I found a hyperlink in one of the reports," she admitted, her palms growing clammy. "It was labeled as an internal review appendix, so I clicked it — and immediately my computer crashed. A trojan virus. It wiped everything I'd been working on."
For a moment, the room felt heavier, the hum of the city beyond the glass walls receding.
"You clicked a blind link in a suspicious document," Alex said, his voice low but sharper now, edged with frustration. "You could have opened a back door right into our entire network."
Sophie swallowed hard. "I know. It was stupid. But I couldn't ignore it — it was buried so carefully, almost like bait."
Alex's stare held hers, his dark eyes searching her expression. Anger sparked there — but behind it, a flicker of something like reluctant respect.
"And you came straight to tell me," he muttered, more to himself than to her.
Sophie nodded, her breath catching. "I thought you should know. Even if it means you're angry with me."
He turned away, raking a hand through his dark hair, then exhaled a slow breath that misted faintly against the glass. "It does make me angry," he admitted, his voice lower now. "Because it's reckless. But it also means you found something worth burying. And that matters."
Sophie's heart thudded harder at his words — at the grudging acknowledgment behind his irritation.
He faced her again, expression hard but composed. "Get IT to run a deep scan on your machine. And next time, if you find something like that, don't open it. Bring it straight to me first."
She nodded quickly, relief and lingering guilt mixing in her chest. "I understand."
"And Sophie," he added, his gaze lingering a beat longer. "Good work. Just… don't burn the building down while you're at it."
A faint, surprised laugh slipped from her lips, breaking the tension. "I'll do my best."
Alex turned away, lifting his phone again — but as Sophie left the office, she couldn't help but notice the subtle shift in his posture. He wasn't just angry anymore.
For the first time, he seemed to see her not as a temporary assistant… but as something more dangerous: an asset he couldn't easily replace.
Sophie stepped out into the corridor, her heart still pounding with the remnants of adrenaline and relief. Her shoes clicked briskly against the polished floor as she made her way to the IT department — a quieter wing of the building where the scent of coffee and humming servers hung heavy in the air.
A young technician named Malik met her at the entrance, his lanyard swinging as he turned. "You must be Sophie, right? Mr. Wolf called ahead."
She nodded, a little breathless. "Yes. My computer… it got hit by a trojan."
"Bring it here," Malik said, guiding her to a workstation. His movements were quick, practiced, as he connected her laptop to an isolated diagnostics rig. Bright lines of code spilled across a monitor, reflected faintly in his glasses.
Sophie stood back, clutching her notebook to her chest, the chill of worry still trailing down her spine.
"It's definitely infected," Malik confirmed after a minute, eyes scanning the data. "But don't panic — the trojan didn't penetrate the company's main servers. The firewall system here is… let's just say paranoid by design."
She exhaled, a shaky laugh escaping her lips. "So nothing leaked from Wolf Industries itself?"
"Nothing from our side," he reassured her. Then his brow furrowed. "But — and this is important — the virus was designed to copy the local files and send them to an external address. Meaning anything you were working on when it hit… is likely in someone else's hands now."
Sophie's pulse thudded painfully at his words. "So if I had notes about something really important…"
"They've probably got them," Malik said gently, though his eyes held a spark of curiosity. "But that might actually tell us something useful."
Her mind raced. If my files were targeted, that means the data leak is real — and someone's actively trying to keep the truth buried.
As Malik worked, Sophie retrieved her printed notes and started cross-referencing them with the quarterly updates she'd downloaded earlier. Page after page, she hunted through the dense financial language, until a pattern began to emerge like an image in fog.
At the very bottom of about a third of the reports, there was a single, tiny hyperlink. Harmless in appearance, labeled vaguely as "Supplemental Review" or "Extended Forecast." Always in pale gray text, easily overlooked.
But always there.
Her chest tightened. That's how it's done. That's how the data leaves the firm. Whoever embedded those links had built a hidden channel: anyone clicking would unknowingly activate malware that harvested internal documents and relayed them to a third party.
She felt a surge of horror at the ingenuity — and a spark of grim determination.
By the time Malik handed her laptop back — wiped clean and re-imaged — Sophie knew she had something explosive: not just suspicion, but a real mechanism behind the data leak.
"Thanks, Malik," she said, her voice shaking but steady. "This… might change everything."
He gave her a small, encouraging smile. "Just be careful, okay? Someone went to a lot of trouble to hide this."
Clutching her notes, Sophie turned back toward the elevators. They'll want to know this upstairs, she thought. Especially Alex.
And despite the tangle of nerves in her stomach, she also felt something unexpected: a flicker of resolve. I may be just an assistant on paper… but I'm not here to sit quietly.