Hector slept like a man who had closed a long day and walked away from it. Flat on his back. One arm over the blanket. Mouth opened a fraction. Breath even and slow.
The scar on his left arm showed pale against the sheet. Two small marks sat below it like a code. Selina had traced them once when they first met.
She watched him for a long minute. The city hummed far below. The penthouse lights were down. A thin glow from the street found the window. Hector's chest rose and fell. He looked harmless.
Her heart beat faster anyway. Fear lived there, sharp and patient. She let it move through her. She had been forged for this. Her father had taught her to be still and to act. He had taught her to breathe inside storms.
She slipped from the bed. The floor was cool under her feet. Satin whispered. She pulled on the robe from the chair and moved soft as a shadow. The robe smelled faintly of his cologne.
Hector's jacket lay where he had tossed it. The badge was clipped inside the pocket. Metal caught the moonlight. She eased her hand near it and felt the small heat of his body through the cloth.
Her fingers closed on the badge. It was ordinary and perfect. She had it once before, when she had meant to test a small thing. Tonight she needed it for more. The metal warmed in her palm and she let herself not tremble.
At the vanity she reached for her phone. Her hand knocked the perfume bottle. It tipped and hit the marble with a clatter. The sound felt huge in the quiet.
Hector did not move. His breath stayed soft and even. Selina held the silence like a prize. Her chest hammered. She tucked the phone in her pocket and the badge under her palm like a prayer.
The living room was a long silent place. Ember had put the last glasses away and drawn the curtains. The house hummed with small machines. The security guard did his rounds in a steady circle. She had watched him on the monitor earlier. He had paused at the service gate and then gone on. That timing made a thin window. She had learned to read those windows like the weather.
She crossed the hall. A faint buzz came from the fridge. The server closet sat behind a paneled door near the study. A small reader winked beside the handle.
Hector had left the closet in maintenance mode for a board demo earlier that day. The reader would accept the badge without a fingerprint. She had seen him call IT and set the override when they had mocked a demo. It was a tiny human fault. It was the hole in the chain she needed.
She held the badge to the reader. A soft beep answered. The lock clicked. The door opened on a cool breath of pressure. Racks rose in rows. Lights blinked in even lines. The hum of fans filled the room like a steady animal.
Selina stepped in and closed the door behind her. The lock made a small sound and the room felt like the belly of something large. Wires curved like rivers. Machines glowed with patient eyes. The rack labels were in a language she half recognized. Her hands moved with the practiced caution of someone who had learned to be quiet.
She had not come for everything. She did not pretend she could take the whole system. She had come for a key. A core file. The quantum key. Not the whole encryption suite. Not the work of months. Just the small file that would open the rest if you owned it.
She set her small drive on the tray she had tucked in her clutch. The plastic felt tight in her fingers. The drive was tiny. It felt like a coin and a blade at the same time.
Her breath slowed. She slid the drive into the port she had asked a trusted IT, her friend, Sandra about it earlier. The screen flared. A line of text pulsed. A folder named 'core_key' appeared. Her hands did not shake.
She thought of what she held. The stories said Draven systems ran governments and private vaults. The quantum key was whispered to be the backbone. If you had that file, you could unravel what sat behind locks elsewhere. It was a single small thing worth more than many fortunes.
Her thumb hovered. She pressed enter.
The machine read and then began to copy. The progress bar crawled. The little green bar moved like a creature trying to cross a street. Selina watched it as if watching her own breathing. She let herself match it. One breath in. One breath out.
A shadow moved in the corridor. A footstep. She froze and did not breathe. The small motion in the hall slid past the door. The guard's walk pattered and then faded. The house made its slow noises. Nothing beeped.
That minute stretched long and thin. The bar inched. Her mind jumped and then gathered. She kept thinking of fathers and debts. She kept thinking of the night at the reception. She thought of faces and blood and Amanda's clean smile.
The bar finished with a tiny click. The drive blinked steady. The file was on the device. Her breath came back in a rush that tasted like metal.
Her heart beat. For a second she imagined alarms. For a second she expected the red light and the door to open with three men in black. None of it came. The house slept on.
Her hand shook a tick as she closed the port. She slid the drive into her clutch and zipped it shut. She smoothed the badge in her pocket like a charm and let her fingers rest on the metal.
She paused at the rack and touched the cold metal. The room smelled of ozone and dust and the faint bleach of maintenance. Machines hummed like the slow breath of a beast. She felt a small respect for the thing she had stolen from. It did not hate her. It did not know.
She opened the door with the badge. The living room rose around her like a stage. The clock on the mantel read a late hour. The house felt like a held breath.
She slipped the badge back into Hector's jacket the way she had found it. The metal sat warm and then chilled as his body heat faded. Her hand lingered a second, like a small goodbye. She slid the clutch under the pillow where he would not find it in the dark.
When she eased into bed he shifted once and sighed. He did not wake. The scar on his arm showed pale in the moonlight. The two marks looked like a promise.
Selina lay with the weight of the night in her chest. Her mind raced and then eased. The drive sat hidden and quiet. The plan had worked. The small metal device in her clutch felt like the pulse of a new world and the nail in the coffin of an old thing.
My father will be happy, she thought. The flash drive sits safe. The Draven empire will tremble. I will sign for divorce and then run to my lover, Caleb. We will make a small life. The idea tasted like sugar.
She touched the thought as if it were a fragile bird. If her mother, Ella were alive she would have smiled. If Ella could know — rest in peace — Selina mouthed the words under her breath. Rest in peace, Mum. Rest in peace, Ella.
The city hissed outside the glass. The house made slow soft sounds. Selina let the tiredness catch her. Her body wanted sleep and her mind wanted the next steps. For a long moment she held both.
Tomorrow, she will call her father with the good news.