By the time Val came out of the bathroom, I was already seated at the dining table.

Aline had laid out breakfast — toast, eggs, a pot of coffee, and something that smelled like guilt and silence. She didn't ask questions. She never did. But from the way she avoided looking at either of us, I could tell she knew we weren't exactly on good terms again.

I hadn't touched my food yet.

Not because I was waiting for Val — at least, that's what I kept telling myself — but because the conversation I had with Charlie kept replaying in my head. Every word, every pause, every smug laugh. The way he'd called me son like he owned the title. Like he owned her.

The scrape of a chair snapped me out of it.

Val had taken the seat across from me. Her hair was still damp, tied back loosely, and there was something fragile about her face, a kind of exhaustion that made her look both soft and heartbreakingly human.

She tilted her head slightly. "Were you waiting for me?"

"Yes," I said.

It was a lie. Of course it was.

She smiled faintly. "Thank you."

And I knew what she meant.

That thank you wasn't for the food or for waiting. It was her way of saying thank you for not being angry anymore, for pretending, at least for a moment, that things were okay.

And I let her believe it.

We ate in silence after that, the kind that wasn't uncomfortable, but heavy, like we were both afraid that saying the wrong thing would shatter the fragile peace between us. I caught myself glancing at her every now and then. Her eyes looked tired, slightly red, and she yawned every other minute, stifling it behind her hand like she was embarrassed.

I felt the guilty.

"You should… probably get some sleep after breakfast," I said quietly.

She blinked, surprised. "Okay."

Her gaze dropped back to her plate, but I caught it, the little smile tugging at her lips.

A real one this time. Small, tired, but genuine.

And somehow, that made me feel even worse.

After breakfast, we walked together back to our room. She sat on the edge of the bed, her fingers tracing the hem of her shirt while I stood by the doorway.

"I'll be in my office," I said, trying to sound casual.

She bit her lip, eyes flickering up at me like she was holding something back. I turned to leave, and that's when her voice stopped me.

> "Kai."

I paused and looked back.

She hesitated, then said softly, "Can you… stay a bit? Just until I fall asleep?"

For a second, I didn't know what to say.

Val rarely asked for anything like that. She was usually the confident one, the one teasing me into holding her, not this… careful version of her. This version that spoke softly, cautiously, as though one wrong word from me might break her.

I felt something twist in my chest. Whatever she'd gone through last night, whatever thoughts had kept her awake while I slept, I could see it now in the way she looked at me.

I sighed quietly and walked over to her. The mattress dipped as I climbed onto the bed. She instantly shifted closer, curling into my side, her head resting against my chest. Her hair was still faintly warm from the shower, and she smelled like her usual mix of something floral.

For a moment, it almost felt normal again.

Neither of us spoke. The silence stretched, but it wasn't uncomfortable. It was… tentative. A peace held together by the thinnest thread.

Then she spoke — her voice small, muffled against my shirt.

"If anything like that ever happens again… I'll make sure I tell you first. No matter what."

Each word was soft, careful, and each one made my guilt feel heavier.

She wasn't just apologizing for the conference. She was apologizing for everything she hadn't done wrong.

I looked down at her, at those tired eyes still trying to meet mine, and I didn't know what to say to that. So instead, I raised my hand and gently covered her eyes with my palm.

"Sleep," I murmured.

She giggled softly, a small, sweet sound that cracked something inside me.

"Yes, sir," she said playfully, voice fading into a whisper.

When I pulled my hand back, her eyes were closed, that happy little smile still curved on her lips — the same smile that always reminded me why I did everything I did.

I watched her for a while, her breathing slowly evening out, her body relaxing against mine.

The most terrifyingly brilliant woman I'd ever known — confident, sharp, untouchable — was also the same woman who, with just one tired smile, could make me feel like the world wasn't falling apart.

And as she drifted to sleep, I realized something else — Val had always been this way. She could be sad one second, then smiling the next. The kind of person who could rebuild herself in real time, as if refusing to let sadness win for too long.

It was one of the things I loved most about her… and maybe, the very thing that made her so hard to protect.

But watching her like this, peaceful and unguarded, it felt like everything that hurt between us—everything that weighed me down—was suddenly gone without a trace.

---

By the time I finally realized how long I'd been lying there, Val was already asleep.

Her breathing had settled into that slow, rhythmic pace that always told me she was truly gone, deep in whatever soft, weightless dream her mind had built for her.

For a moment, I didn't move. I just stared at her.

The way a loose strand of hair had fallen across her cheek.

The faint crease between her brows that never quite smoothed out, even when she slept.

And that small smile — still there, like her mind hadn't quite let go of the moment before she drifted off.

I lifted my hand and brushed the strand of hair away, careful not to wake her.

She shifted slightly, her fingers unconsciously tightening on the fabric of my shirt before relaxing again. It hit me then, how fragile she looked like this — not in the weak sense, but in that rare way that made you realize how much strength it took for someone like her to be soft at all.

Eventually, I slipped off the bed.

Quietly. Slowly.

Her fingers loosened their hold, and I watched her turn in her sleep, curling into the space I'd just left behind.

It was Saturday.

Which meant I didn't have to go to work.

But that didn't mean I didn't have to work.

I made my way down the hallway, my steps light, the house unnervingly still. Duchess wasn't around, probably asleep in some sunlit corner of the living room. Aline's soft humming from the kitchen was the only sign of life.

My office was exactly how I'd left it: papers stacked neatly on one side of the desk, the glow from the monitor casting faint lines of light across the floor.

I sat down, cracked my knuckles once, and pulled up the files.

The Meridian Development Initiative — Part II.

The first part, the one we'd presented at the Pre-Proposal Conference, had already gone through Tasha and landed on Hale's desk for approval a week ago.

Now, this part — the continuation — was supposed to be the more detailed segment. The deeper, heavier one.

The one that could make or break the project.

I was halfway through recalculating a data set when my phone started buzzing beside the keyboard.

Tasha.

I hesitated for half a second before answering. "Morning."

"Kai," she said quickly, too quickly. There was something in her voice that immediately told me this wasn't just a check-in. "Do you have a minute?"

"Yeah. What's up?"

"Okay, so… this is weird," she began, the sound of her typing coming through the line. "I just logged in to finish compiling the finance analysis files you sent last week. The same ones from Phase 1? They're gone."

I frowned. "Gone?"

"As in missing," she said. "I opened the shared folder — completely empty. At first, I thought maybe I archived them wrong, but I checked the logs. Nothing. Not even a trace of the upload history."

I leaned back in my chair, eyebrows drawn together. "That doesn't make sense. I sent those over to you directly."

"I know. I have the email. But when I opened the link, it was blank. The whole directory's clean."

For a moment, I didn't reply.

A part of me wanted to think it was just some server glitch, it happened before. But there was something in her tone that told me she'd already thought of that.

She sighed. "I thought maybe Hale had a local copy, so I called him."

"And?" I asked.

"He checked his drive. Nothing. Same story."

I exhaled through my nose. "Wow," I muttered. "Hale's gonna flip."

"It's not funny, Kai," she snapped, voice tight. "These were the files we used for the pre-proposal draft. If they're missing, it means everything from Phase 1's audit logs is gone too. That's weeks of work. Not just ours — Ji-ho's, Noah's, Gabriel's. I checked with them. Their local folders are wiped too."

I sat up a little straighter. "Wait— all of them?"

"Yeah," she said. "Every single one."

That uneasy feeling started creeping up my spine.

I turned to my second monitor and opened the local archive, the one I'd used back at the office. It wasn't exactly untouched, but it shouldn't have been missing anything either. Those were the finalized files from the first phase, the ones I'd already sent to Tasha for review.

Empty.

Completely empty.

The timestamp on the folder read: Modified – 3:12 a.m.

My hand stilled on the mouse.

3:12 a.m. — I was asleep. And Val… Val had been in the shower.

Tasha's voice broke through the static in my head.

"Kai? You still there?"

"Yeah," I said quietly, my eyes still on the screen. "Yeah, I'm here."

"Look, maybe it's just a backup error. Or the system glitched during maintenance," she continued, almost convincing herself. "But the weird part is… the audit logs are wiped too. There's no trace of deletion. It's like they never existed."

I rubbed a hand over my face, feeling that dull throb start behind my eyes. "All right. Just… ask IT to pull the network history. If it's a sync issue, we'll see something on the server-side log."

"I already tried," she said softly. "That's the thing, Kai. There's nothing. The system didn't just delete the files. It erased the records of them ever being there."

The line went quiet for a moment.

I could hear her breathing — slow, controlled, like she was trying not to sound panicked.

Finally, I said, "I'll check from my end. See if anything shows up on my local cache."

"Okay," she murmured. Then, after a pause, "You don't think—"

"I don't know what to think yet," I cut in gently. "Let's not jump ahead of ourselves."

Another silence. Then, she sighed again.

"All right. Just… keep me posted, yeah?"

"Yeah," I said. "I will."

When the call ended, the quiet that followed felt heavier than before. I leaned back in my chair, staring at the blank folder still open on my screen.

Empty.

As if weeks of work had never existed.

Somewhere in the back of my mind, a thought I didn't want to entertain began to form, slow, sharp, and unwelcome.

Someone didn't want the Meridian Development Initiative to move forward.

And for the first time that morning, I realized something — this wasn't just a glitch.

This was deliberate.

And whoever did it knew exactly where to strike.

I glanced toward the window, the sunlight cutting through the blinds, lines of light falling across my desk. The house was still quiet upstairs. Val was still sleeping.

I didn't know if I should wake her, or if I should ever let her know.

But one thing was certain.

Whatever this was, it wasn't random.

It was calculated.

And if Charlie George Moreau was behind it…

Then this war had already started.

---

To be continued...

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.