Chapter Ten: The First Hack

Luca

The city was dead quiet. Midnight had come and gone, but I was wide awake—wired, focused, hands hovering over my keyboard like a pianist about to perform something wicked.

Eva had delivered.

Hours ago, she sent over the data we agreed on. Nothing flashy. Just internal account logs, budget forecasts, team activity. Enough to map Wolfe Enterprises' internal operations without raising alarms. Enough to prove she still wanted in on the plan.

But now it was my turn.

The real work.

I leaned back, cracked my neck, then returned my gaze to the screen. Wolfe Enterprises' firewall shimmered like a wall of mirrors—layers of code, security flags, redundancy triggers. I'd breached harder systems, but this one… this one was personal.

I started slow, ghosting into their mainframe like a shadow in velvet shoes. No flags. No glitches. Clean.

Until I tripped over it.

An odd folder buried in the security server logs. Encrypted. Too clean.

I paused.

What the hell was this?

Curiosity itched like poison under my skin. I cracked it open, expecting some back-end employee report or maintenance sweep.

What I found made my stomach drop.

Emails. A string of them.

From Eva Sinclair.

To me.

And not the ones she actually sent.

No—these were fabricated. Crafted to look like a digital paper trail of espionage. Lines of code confirmed the metadata had been tampered with, but to someone less experienced, it would look airtight.

One email read:

"Will have access to Damien's private financial accounts next week. Be ready."

Another:

"HR's firewalls are weak. I'll upload more tonight."

It was textbook framing—well-done, polished, smart. Too smart.

And for a split second, I thought she'd betrayed me.

My pulse spiked. Fingers hovered over the keyboard.

I almost backed out.

Almost.

But then I saw it—a tiny inconsistency in the headers. Whoever did this used an older version of my PGP encryption key, one I hadn't touched in years. A key that hadn't been public since 2021.

They'd pulled it from an old leak database. Sloppy.

That was the first crack.

The second? The IP trail. I traced the data pathway backward and found reroutes that came from inside Wolfe Tower.

This wasn't Eva.

It was someone trying to bury her.

And in doing so, they just stepped into my territory.

"Son of a bitch," I muttered under my breath.

Now I had a choice.

Walk away. Keep my access. Stay invisible.

Or…

Protect her.

I sighed heavily and cracked my knuckles. The decision was already made.

I injected a fake access point into the logs—a dummy third party named RothByte Consulting, based in Zurich. Completely fictional. I built a false email chain, mimicked the same formatting, and shifted the spy trail to them. Then, I deleted all traceable links to Eva and rerouted the investigation toward RothByte.

Of course, the cost was high.

To make it believable, I had to burn my access.

I wiped the backdoor she'd unknowingly helped me build. Gone. Just like that.

I'd have to start over from scratch next time.

I leaned back in my chair, exhaled slowly, and grabbed my phone.

Eva picked up on the second ring.

"Luca?" she sounded tired. Nervous.

I wasted no time. "We've got a problem. A big one."

Silence.

"I was going through Wolfe's logs," I said, voice low, fast, "and someone planted fake evidence. Framed you as a corporate spy. Emails, logs, metadata—it all looked real. For a second, I even believed it."

"I—what?" Her voice cracked. "That's not—"

"I know it's not you," I cut in. "Whoever did it knows what they're doing. But not as well as I do."

She went quiet again. I could hear her breathing.

"I rerouted it," I continued. "Created a phantom company to take the fall. They'll think the breach came from outside. You're safe—for now."

A beat passed.

"Luca…" she whispered. "Thank you."

I didn't respond right away.

Because gratitude was nice.

But gratitude didn't get me back into Wolfe's servers.

"I just sacrificed access I spent months building," I said bluntly. "That wasn't part of the plan."

"I didn't know someone was watching me," she said. "I swear, I didn't do anything to raise suspicion."

"You didn't have to. You exist, Eva. That's enough. Someone's trying to erase you."

The line was silent.

Then she said, "What do you want?"

Straight to the point. That's what I liked about her.

"I need deeper access," I said. "Admin credentials. The kind Damien himself uses."

She choked. "That's impossible."

"It's not," I said. "You work with him. You have his trust. I'm not asking you to clone his brain—I just need a door. A keystroke. A misplaced token."

"And if I can't?"

"Then next time someone tries to frame you," I said quietly, "I might not be able to stop it."

More silence.

Then, softly, she said, "I'll try."

"Good girl."

I hung up.

This game had just gone from corporate theft to something far more dangerous.

Someone powerful wanted Eva gone.

And now, I was officially in the crossfire too.