The rain hadn't stopped.
It whispered against the windows like static, like the remnants of secrets trying to speak.
Alexander stood in the control room beneath the manor, a hidden level only a handful of his men had ever entered. Banks of monitors lined the wall, each flickering with distorted footage of the estate. The generator's hum filled the silence between his thoughts.
Damian was waiting, pale beneath the fluorescent light. "We traced the breach, sir."
Alexander didn't look up. His gaze fixed on the looping footage, one camera showing the north gate, another the east corridor, where the staff rooms were kept. All perfectly mundane, until one frame froze.
A woman.
Half-shadowed.
Mara.
"Show me," Alexander said.
Damian expanded the feed. The maid was at the terminal near the servants' quarters, typing quickly, her posture tense. The timestamp glared in the corner, 23:18.
That was the same minute the monitors upstairs had gone black.
"She used her access key," Damian said. "But the data transfer, it wasn't local. It was routed through an offshore network."
"Which one?"
"Lucent Holdings."
Alexander's head lifted slowly. That name wasn't random. It was deliberate. And personal.
Lucent Holdings was one of his own subsidiaries, owned quietly under the Hayes Group.
Victoria Hayes' empire.
A beat of silence passed before Alexander spoke, his voice low and lethal. "She's in my house now. Not just at my table, inside my walls."
Damian swallowed. "Sir, there's more."
He handed over a file. Inside were printed logs, chat transcripts, encoded messages between the terminal and a private address.
Alexander read the alias.
A.H. — Directive 7.
He knew that designation. Hayes' personal project code.
She hadn't simply attacked his image.
She had infiltrated his home.
He set the papers down with controlled precision. "Where's Mara now?"
"In her quarters. Guards are posted."
Alexander's eyes darkened. "Bring her to the study."
Damian hesitated. "Sir… she's frightened. Claims she didn't know what she was doing. Says someone promised her money for harmless information."
"Nothing in this house is harmless," Alexander said quietly.
He turned toward the monitors once more. The rain outside made everything shimmer, his reflection fractured across the glass.
He looked like a man built from pieces of his own ruin.
Selene's POV
When I saw them drag Mara into the study, my heart stopped.
Her face was pale, streaked with tears, hands bound loosely in front of her. She looked young. Too young to have been anyone's spy.
Alexander stood by the fireplace, sleeves rolled up again, every inch of him carved in control. Damian waited near the door, silent.
"Alexander, what are you doing?" I demanded.
He didn't answer me, only nodded for the guards to leave. The door shut with a heavy sound that made my stomach twist.
"Mara," he said quietly, "you've been busy."
She shook her head. "Sir, I… I swear, I didn't mean…"
"Mean what?" His tone was cold steel wrapped in silk. "To betray me? Or to get caught?"
Tears spilled down her cheeks. "They said it was just payroll information. I didn't know it was…"
"Who?" Alexander's voice sharpened.
"I don't know her name! She called from an unlisted number. Said she was part of your company…"
Selene stepped forward. "Alexander, stop. She's terrified."
He looked at me, eyes like winter. "Good. Fear keeps people honest."
"This isn't interrogation, it's intimidation!"
He turned fully toward me now. "Do you know how close she came to endangering you? The twins? Everything?"
"She's a maid, not a mercenary!"
"Every betrayal starts with the person no one suspects," he said.
His gaze dropped back to Mara, who was shaking violently. "What else did they ask for?"
"Nothing else, I swear! Just schedules. Names. Who lives here. Who visits. She… she said she worked for Lucent." Her eyes darted up. "She knew about the twins."
Alexander went still.
Selene felt it, the air changing. The moment when anger turns to intent.
"Mara," he said softly, dangerously, "you will give me everything. Every message. Every detail. Every word."
"I already did…"
"Then you'll show me."
He reached for his phone, dialing with surgical calm.
"Damian. Extract her messages. Every byte. I want them decrypted within the hour."
When he hung up, his expression didn't change. But his eyes were darker than I'd ever seen them.
"Alexander," I whispered, "what are you planning?"
"Containment."
"That's not an answer."
"It's the only one that keeps you safe."
Alexander's POV
He left the study before she could stop him.
Rage, cold and mathematical, threaded through him as he moved down the corridor. His footsteps echoed off marble, the sound of a man losing patience with restraint.
Victoria had underestimated him.
She thought she could weaponize loyalty, buy it, twist it. She'd forgotten who taught her the game in the first place.
When he reached his private office, he activated the encrypted console. Lines of code illuminated the glass, security firewalls unlocking one by one.
Every whisper of data from Lucent Holdings, every transaction routed through the offshore network, he pulled them all up, feeding them into KnightCorp's own servers. The hum of the machine sounded almost like a growl.
He found the root trace within minutes.
It wasn't just financial data being extracted. It was internal schematics, layouts of Knight Manor, security protocols, staff profiles.
They had mapped his home.
Prepared to strike where it hurt most.
Then he saw it, an attached video file, dated two nights ago.
He opened it.
Selene.
In the garden with Zara and Zane. Laughter. The twins chasing fireflies, their faces bright.
The footage zoomed in, invasive, calculated. Not surveillance. Targeting.
Alexander's hands clenched around the desk's edge until the wood groaned.
He'd thought the war was corporate.
But this was personal.
He reached for the phone again. "Damian. I want Lucent's main servers infiltrated. Mirror their systems. Pull everything Hayes touches."
"Sir, that's illegal…"
"So is espionage," Alexander snapped. "Do it."
He ended the call before his assistant could protest. Then, for the first time in a long time, he let his head drop into his hands.
He could build empires, destroy competitors, rewrite markets, but he couldn't stop the world from turning his family into leverage.
Selene's POV
When I found him later, he was sitting in the dark, the only light from the screens still alive around him.
The air smelled faintly of ozone and scotch.
He didn't look up when I entered. "You shouldn't be here."
"You say that every time you're about to cross a line," I said quietly.
He exhaled through his nose, not smiling. "I've crossed too many already."
I came closer, my voice trembling. "What are you doing?"
He tapped a key. The video replayed, the same one of me and the twins in the garden. My chest tightened at the sight. "Where did you get this?"
"It came from Lucent Holdings," he said. "Victoria's people. The leak inside the house sent them this."
My mouth went dry. "Why would she…"
"To ruin me," he said softly. "And to remind me that she can."
His tone wasn't rage anymore. It was something colder, the voice of a man being hollowed out by purpose.
"You can't fight her like this," I whispered. "You'll lose more than you think."
He finally looked at me, and it was like staring into glass. "There's nothing left she can take that matters."
"That's not true."
His jaw flexed. "Then tell me what still matters, Selene."
I hesitated. "Us. The twins. What we've built."
He looked away. "They're the only reason I haven't burned her company to ash yet."
"Then stop before you do something you can't undo."
Her words softened, trembled at the edges. "You're not a weapon, Alexander."
He rose then, tall, composed, the firelight cutting sharp angles across his face. "You think love changes a man like me. It doesn't. It just gives him something to fight for."
"And if fighting destroys what you love?"
He stared at her for a long moment. Then, quietly: "Then I'll learn to rebuild in the ashes."
Alexander's POV
An hour later, Damian returned with results.
"The data link from Mara's terminal led to a second user," he said. "Inside KnightCorp's internal server."
Alexander turned slowly. "Who?"
Damian hesitated. "Eleanor Graves."
For a second, Alexander didn't move.
His CFO. His oldest ally. The one who'd vouched for Victoria's new initiatives before everything began.
"She's been forwarding quarterly reports to Lucent under a proxy," Damian continued. "Signed under a non-disclosure code linked to the Hayes Group merger."
"Meaning she's been bought," Alexander said flatly.
"Yes, sir."
He sank back into his chair, expression unreadable.
Victoria's influence ran deeper than he thought, straight into the spine of his own corporation.
"Do we have proof?"
"Enough to sink her."
"Not yet," Alexander said. "We wait until she thinks she's safe. Then we strike."
Damian hesitated. "Sir, there's one more thing. The infiltration, it wasn't just data. Someone accessed the biometric entry system for the manor."
Alexander's head lifted. "Which part?"
"The children's wing."
For the first time that night, his composure cracked.
"Who had authorization?"
"Mara's ID. But it was cloned. Whoever's behind this… they can enter whenever they want."
He stood slowly. "Then the game's over."
Selene's POV
I couldn't sleep.
The house felt haunted, not by ghosts, but by the living. By secrets breathing through the walls.
I lay awake in the dim light, listening to the rain, the twins asleep beside me. Somewhere below, Alexander was still awake, plotting in silence.
But tonight, something about him frightened me.
Not his anger. Not even his control.
It was his calm, that terrifying kind that comes before destruction.
I rose, slipping from bed, my bare feet soft against the marble floor.
Down the corridor, the study door was ajar again. Light spilled across the hall like a secret daring to be caught.
He was on the phone. His voice was low, precise. "No, we don't expose her yet. Let her believe she's invisible. When the time comes, she'll sign her own confession."
A pause. Then: "Yes. Victoria first."
I pressed my hand to the wall, heart hammering.
He wasn't just defending us anymore. He was hunting.
And somehow, I knew the cost of his vengeance would find us all.
As the clock struck three, the manor's lights flickered again, but this time, the security feed didn't show the red warning.
It showed Victoria Hayes herself, smiling from a recorded message.
"Hello, Alexander. Did you really think I'd stay outside your walls forever?"