Partners in Crime, Not in love

I remembered when he had just started his company, crammed into a tiny office, the two of us sharing one cup of instant noodles. His eyes sparkled as he told me:

“Rachel, we’re going to change the world.”

As the company grew, we made countless enemies.

To win that critical patent, I used every trick, pushing our rival to the edge until its leader leapt to his death.

Ethan held me tight afterward:

“Don’t be afraid, Rachel. We’re partners in crime. For life, we’re bound together.”

On the eve of the Aegis System’s debut, we faced our most vicious hacker attack. The servers were on the verge of collapse.

I locked myself in the server room for seventy-two hours, fighting back wave after wave of intrusions until exhaustion knocked me out in his arms.

He kept vigil all night, red-eyed, whispering:

“Rachel, you’re my armor, and my weakness. Without you, what would I do?”

Those bloody, hidden battles—he once called them our shared medals, proof of our inseparable bond.

And yet now, he claimed Lily was pure and clean, that her future shouldn’t be stained by blood like mine.

How laughable.

He fell in love with the very purity he had stripped away from himself, forgetting who bore all the shadows so he could bask in the light.

He wanted my dirty hands to shield him while he sought comfort in his white-moonlight angel.

Everything, always in his favor.

But I hadn’t expected Ethan to move so fast, so ruthlessly.

Less than half an hour after I cut the call, just as I drove out of the lab’s range, the car radio blared a breaking news report:

“Urgent! LR Corporation announces a major malicious cyberattack. Portions of core technical data may have leaked. Emergency measures have been activated, and authorities have been notified…”

My expression darkened. He had reacted faster than I imagined—redefining everything as a hostile attack, casting himself as the victim, seizing control of public opinion.

The next second, every one of my bank cards and digital payment accounts was frozen.

My face hardened. To mobilize such financial resources with such precision, he had clearly prepared for this long ago.

Perhaps he had always planned to drive me into this very corner.

Using a disposable phone, I connected to public Wi-Fi and tried to access the hidden backdoors I had buried deep in LR’s system.

Just as I caught a signal, an encrypted message popped up from one of my embedded contacts in LR’s tech department:

“Ms. Rachel! Run! Mr. Blake has uncovered every hidden access! He planted reverse tracking traps! He’s been waiting for you to log in again! He’s lost it—he swore he’d stop at nothing to find you!”

The message cut off. The line was dead when I called back.

Cold sweat drenched my back. He knew my habits too well—he had predicted every move I’d make.

The man with whom I once shared every secret and every line of code was now weaving a net to capture me.

A crushing sense of betrayal and fury overwhelmed me.

That night, LR held a press conference.

Ethan appeared before the cameras, exhausted yet projecting steady determination. He blamed the incident entirely on a disgruntled former employee hired by competitors to commit corporate espionage and sabotage.

He denounced such behavior as shameless and harmful to the industry.

Not once did he mention Lily—yet he masterfully painted himself as the victimized leader of the sector.

The cameras turned to Lily.

Her face was swathed in heavy bandages, only a pair of tear-swollen, pitiful eyes showing through.