Chapter 7

Fighting back the tearing pain of multiple organ failure,

I reached under my pillow and pulled out my highly encrypted MacBook Air.

The bite of the cold metal snapped me out of my daze.

My fingers flew across the keyboard.

Julian would use every connection to scrub Chloe's digital footprint clean.

I had to lock down every shred of her crimes—

from the server hacks to the market manipulation—before he could.

The progress bar on the screen inched forward, slow but steady.

My vision was getting darker by the second.

I was practically blind-typing,

relying entirely on raw muscle memory.

"What the hell are you doing now?"

Julian hung up,

His freezing gaze instantly locked onto my laptop.

He lunged across the room,

slamming the laptop shut with a deafening crack.

"The company is burning to the ground over a 'little mistake,'

and you're just sitting there scrolling?!"

"Eleanor, do you have any humanity left in you at all?!"

I slowly raised my head, meeting his furious gaze.

"Humanity?"

I let out a cold laugh, coughing up a mouthful of blood.

"Julian Croft...

you're covering for a criminal who qualifies as a domestic terrorist...

and you're questioning my humanity?"

His expression turned lethal.

The air between us turned to ice.

"What the fuck are you talking about?!"

"Chloe is just a spoiled kid!

What could she possibly understand?!"

"Don't flatter yourself.

You're a housewife.

You have no idea how a hundred-billion-dollar company actually works."