The alphabet ''A'' refused to leave her alone. It followed Alina everywhere, etched into her thoughts, burning behind her eyelids even when she closed her eyes. It wasn't just a letter anymore. It was a door she had accidentally opened, and now something on the other side was watching her back.
Her room was dark except for the glow of multiple screens. The curtains were half drawn, letting the city's distant neon bleed inside. Coffee cups littered the table. Her phone lay face down beside her laptop, silent but heavy, as if it carried a pulse of its own.
Alina rubbed her eyes, exhaustion clawing at her skull. "How can one alphabet do this?" she muttered.
She had tried everything a normal person could. Then she crossed the line. For hours, no, for days, she lived inside the internet's underbelly. Hidden forums. Private servers. Password-protected archives where people didn't use real names, only aliases and threats. She read until her vision blurred, fingers scrolling endlessly, heart sinking every time she hit another dead end.
Luxury phone registries.....blocked.
Private client leaks.....scrubbed.
Aureum Grand Technologies......sealed like a tomb.
That's when she hired him. The hacker didn't ask questions. He never did. He sat across from her in a dim room that smelled of smoke and electronics, hood pulled low, fingers already moving before she even finished explaining.
Hours passed. The room grew warmer. The only sound was the rapid clicking of keys and the low hum of machines. Alina sat rigid in her chair, hands clasped tightly in her lap, nails biting into skin.
"Seventy per cent," the hacker murmured. Her heart jumped.
"Ninety." She leaned forward.
"Ninety-nine." Alina held her breath by just one per cent. One breath away. Then.... The screens flickered.
"What the—" the hacker straightened, fingers flying faster. "Someone's inside."
Alina's spine went cold. ''Inside where?''
"No," he muttered. "No, no....this isn't a countermeasure. This is an attack."
The code on the screen began collapsing in real time, lines deleting themselves, files burning away like paper in fire. Her pulse thundered.
"Can you stop it?" she asked.
The hacker's jaw tightened. "Whoever this is… they're not just good. They're surgical." Then the system went dark; every screen, every file was gone, and silence swallowed the room.
The hacker leaned back slowly, disbelief etched across his face. "They didn't just kick me out," he said. "They erased me."
Alina stood up abruptly. "Who was it?"
He shook his head. "They wiped everything." Her chest tightened, disappointment crashing into fury.
"So that's it?" she asked sharply. "I get nothing?"
The hacker paused. "…Wait."
He turned toward her. "Give me your laptop."
She hesitated only a second before handing it over. He plugged something in, worked fast, movements precise despite the damage done. Then he turned the screen toward her.
"This...," he said quietly, "....is all I could give you"
Alina frowned. "What am I looking at?...a location?" Coordinates pulsed on the screen. Her breath hitched.
"This is where the counter-hack came from," he continued. "I can't tell you who they are. But I can tell you where they were when they destroyed my system."
She stared at the map; it wasn't too far, not too close.
The hacker nodded. "Whoever you're chasing… they are not hiding. They are standing in plain sight."
Alina closed the laptop slowly, heart racing now not from fear, but from something sharper. A Hope that she got to uncover the truth
"Thank you," she said, already reaching for her bag. She didn't wait for a response and rushed from there. She knows one thing for certain that she is close. And now she is not walking away.
****
The glass in Kai Arden's hand barely moved, yet the amber liquid inside it trembled faintly, mirroring the quiet, controlled storm beneath his calm exterior.
He sat in the deepest corner of Obsidian Vault, a private members-only club hidden behind layers of permissions, biometric scans, and unspoken rules. This wasn't a place people visited. It was a place they were allowed into if they were powerful enough, dangerous enough, or rich enough to matter.
Kai belonged here the way shadows belonged to the night. Low lights brushed his jawline, carving sharp edges into an already unreadable face. The music was slow, heavy, vibrating through the floor rather than blasting through speakers. Conversations around him were muted, cautious. Even here, even among elites, people knew better than to speak loudly when Kai Arden was present.
No one disturbed him. No one dared. His eyes weren't on the dance floor. Not on the bar. Not on the people pretending not to stare at him. His attention was elsewhere.
He leaned back slightly, one arm resting along the leather seat, posture relaxed, too relaxed for someone who had orchestrated chaos without lifting a finger. His mind, however, was already ten steps ahead, mapping her thoughts like a chessboard he had studied for years.
"She won't stay quiet," he thought, lips curving almost imperceptibly.
Alina wasn't the kind of woman who accepted coincidences. She didn't swallow lies just because they were wrapped in glitter and convenience. He knew the moment she received the phone. He had counted on it.
She would question. She would doubt. She would dig. And she would do it beautifully, recklessly. Kai lifted the glass, taking a slow sip, eyes darkening with something dangerously close to admiration.
"She'll start with the obvious," he mused. "Customer service. Fake names. Authority."
His gaze sharpened. "She'll bluff. Threaten. Act like she belongs somewhere she doesn't."
A soft exhale left him almost a chuckle. "She always does."
He remembered the exact second he saw the request spike in Aureum's internal firewall. The way the system trembled, alarms whispering instead of screaming because whoever was poking around knew what they were doing. Not enough, though.
Kai had watched silently as Alina hired a hacker. Watched as the man breached layer after layer, inching closer to information no one on the outside had ever seen. Ninety percent.
Ninety-nine. Kai didn't stop him immediately. He let it happen. Because Kai Arden never reacted. He allowed.
He allowed the hacker to think he was winning. Allowed the system to look vulnerable. Allowed the trail to exist. Then...precisely when the hacker thought he was one breath away from the truth, Kai stepped in. Not violently. Not hurriedly but efficiently.
He didn't just kick the hacker out. He erased him. Every log. Every trace. Every illusion of control. And when he was done, he did something far more dangerous. He left a location behind on purpose. Kai's fingers tapped once against the glass.
"She'll come," he thought calmly.
This wasn't arrogance. It was pattern recognition. Alina Carter chased answers like she chased air when drowning, desperate, determined, and unstoppable. And Kai had designed this moment knowing exactly how she would move.
He didn't make himself hard to find. He made himself easy to guess. That was the trick. Anyone clever could hide. Only the untouchable could afford to be visible.
Across the room, a few heads turned subtly in his direction. Not because he moved but because something in the atmosphere shifted when he smiled. Not a warm smile. A knowing one. The kind that said I already know what you're going to do next.
"She'll end up here," he thought.
Obsidian Vault. The irony almost amused him. This club had hosted kings without crowns, criminals with clean records, geniuses who rewrote industries overnight. And tonight, it was hosting a woman who didn't belong here but would walk in anyway, chin lifted, heart racing, pretending she did.
Kai imagined it vividly. The way her eyes would widen just a fraction. The way she'd scan the room without letting panic show. The way her pulse would spike when she realised she wasn't hunting anymore. She was being invited.
He set the glass down slowly, deliberately. Kai Arden wasn't a man people understood. He wasn't meant to be decoded. He wasn't meant to be reached. He was the kind of man who let others believe they were close while standing several worlds above them.
And as the bass of the club thudded like a second heartbeat, Kai waited. For the sound of a door opening. For the shift in air. For the moment, Alina Carter stepped into his world exactly where he wanted her.