Secret Lover, Public Enemy

I didn't answer the text.

I deleted it, went back to the studio, and didn't go home for two days.

"You need sleep," Priya said on the second night, setting a coffee by my elbow.

"I need the core columns to stop fighting the wind load." I zoomed in on the tower model. "Sleep is for people who aren't presenting on Thursday."

Behind us, our intern, Toby Marsh, hunched over his laptop. He'd stayed late both nights too. I remember thinking that was sweet.

I remember thanking him.

...

The review room at Thorne Tower was all glass and cold air. Twelve experts sat along one side of the table. Thorne executives filled the other.

Kaiyan sat at the head.

Elder Corwin sat two chairs down, hands folded on his cane.

"Ms. Voss." Dr. Ingrid Halvorsen, the lead structural engineer, didn't bother with hello. She slid a printout across the table. "Page forty-one. Your transfer beams on floors thirty through thirty-four."

I scanned it. My stomach dropped through the floor.

"These load values are wrong."

"Wrong?" She raised one gray eyebrow. "They're catastrophic. Under a strong storm, those beams fail. The upper floors shear off." She turned to the room. "This would have killed people."

The room erupted.

"Unbelievable."

"Who signed off on this?"

"This is a public landmark, not a student project."

"Those aren't my numbers." I kept my voice level, though my pulse slammed against my collar. "I ran those calculations three times. My original values were nearly double."

"Then where are they?" Dr. Halvorsen asked.

"In my files. On the—" I stopped.

On the shared server. The one Toby had access to.

"Ms. Voss?"

"Someone changed this file." I looked straight at her. "Someone went into my drawings and altered them."

A man from the investor side snorted. "That's convenient."

"It's the truth."

"Then prove it," he said.

I couldn't. Not here. Not in the next five minutes. My hands, flat on the table, wanted to curl into fists. I made them stay still.

At the head of the table, Kaiyan hadn't moved. But his eyes were on the printout, not on me. His thumb pressed hard into the edge of the file, white at the knuckle.

He knew. Somehow, he already knew.

Elder Corwin cleared his throat. The whole room hushed.

"Kaiyan." The old man didn't even raise his voice. "The board convenes at three. If Thorne Group is seen shielding a Voss after this, your executive authority will be frozen before dinner. Every account. Every signature." He tapped the cane once on the floor. "Choose carefully."

Silence.

I turned my head and fixed on Kaiyan. *Say it. Say something is wrong here. You know it is.*

He rose.

He buttoned his jacket. His face closed like a vault.

"Until these questions are resolved," he said, "Thorne Group is ending all cooperation with Elowen Voss."

Someone started clapping. Then stopped, embarrassed.

I didn't cry. I didn't even blink. I gathered my drawings, squared the edges against the table, and said, "Thank you for your time."

By the time I reached the elevator, my phone had eleven new messages.

*Is it true you nearly dropped a tower on a crowd?*

*Heard Voss can't do math.*

*Guess the award was a fluke.*

...

I didn't take the elevator.

I waited at the end of the hallway by the fire stairs until I heard his footsteps. Alone. He always walked alone after meetings he hated.

He turned the corner and stopped dead.

"Elowen."

"You knew." I kept my voice low. The words still came out like glass breaking. "You sat there and you *knew* those numbers weren't mine."

His jaw locked. "I got a call last night. Someone in IT flagged a late login on your firm's server. I didn't have details."

"You had enough."

"Not enough to beat Corwin in front of twelve witnesses."

"So you handed me to them instead."

"I kept my seat." He stepped closer, his voice rough and urgent. "If I lose that chair, I lose every tool I have to fix this. You understand that, right? You *have* to understand that."

I stared at him. The tie was perfect today. Not a thread out of place.

"Funny," I said. "Last time, you also had a very good reason."

He winced, like the words had teeth.

"Listen to me." He pulled a slim card case from his pocket and slid out a black card. "I'll cover the firm's losses. Legal fees. Whatever clients walk. We'll settle this privately, quietly. Nobody has to—"

"Nobody has to know." I finished it for him.

He went still.

"That's always the line, isn't it?" I looked at the card in his hand. It probably had no limit. It probably had no name on it, either. "Money in the dark. Apologies in parking garages. Love in hallways where the cameras don't reach."

"Elowen—"

"No." I pushed the card back against his chest with two fingers. "I don't need your secret charity, Kaiyan. If you want to help, investigate this in the open. Publicly. With your name on it."

"You're asking me to go to war with my own family."

"I'm asking you to stand up." My throat burned. "If you won't, then stop finding me. Stop following me into stairwells. We're done."

His lips parted. For one second, I thought he'd say it.

His phone rang. *Corwin* lit up on the screen.

He looked at it.

That was all the answer I needed. I turned and pushed through the fire door, and I didn't let it slam. I let it close softly behind me. Somehow that felt worse.

...

I called Jasper from the car.

He picked up on the first ring. "I saw the industry boards. Are you okay?"

"No." I gripped the wheel. "But I'm not done."

"Good. That's my girl." Papers rustled on his end. Jasper had been a forensic auditor for six years. He could smell a lie in a spreadsheet. "Talk to me. Who touched the files?"

"Shared server. Four people have access. Me, Priya, our senior drafter, and Toby. The intern."

"The intern who stayed late?"

I went quiet.

"Elowen."

"He stayed late two nights in a row. I thanked him. I bought him dinner."

"Okay. Don't spiral. We work the problem." His voice went crisp. "Your original drafts. Did you save anything off the server?"

"My hand calcs are in a notebook at home. And I back up to an external drive every Sunday."

"Last Sunday?"

"Yes."

"Then that drive is gold. It'll show your original load values with a timestamp before the changes." I heard him typing. "Next, server logs. Every edit leaves a footprint. Login time, device, user. If Toby did it, he either used his account, or he's dumb enough to have used yours."

"And if someone paid him?"

"Then money moved. Money always leaves a trail." A pause. "You thinking what I'm thinking?"

The text from the garage flashed in my mind. *Stay away from my fiancé.*

"I'm thinking Seraphina Hale doesn't make threats she won't back up."

"Then we don't accuse her yet. We collect. Drive, logs, bank activity, Toby's phone if we can get it legally. Clean evidence only. Nothing they can twist."

I let out a long breath. My hands had finally stopped shaking.

"Jasper?"

"Yeah?"

"Thank you. For not asking about him."

He was quiet for a moment. "I figured you'd tell me if you wanted me to punch him."

I laughed. It surprised both of us.

...

It was past midnight when I got home. I found the external drive in my desk drawer, plugged it in, and watched the folders load.

My original files were there. Every number exactly where I'd left it.

I almost cried with relief.

Then my phone lit up on the desk.

A news alert.

*EXCLUSIVE: Thorne CEO's Secret Romance With Disgraced Architect—Never-Before-Seen Photos*

My thumb was numb as I tapped it.

The first photo was us at nineteen and twenty-two, on the roof of the old library, my head on his shoulder.

The second was his hand on my waist, outside my dorm window. Two in the morning. The timestamp burned in the corner.

The third was the ring. On its chain. Around my neck.

Only one person had ever seen that ring up close besides us.

And the article's last line made my blood run cold:

*Sources say this is only the beginning.*