I stayed at the office that night. The narrow sofa felt safer than the house. I lay awake listening to the building settle. Every sound replayed itself as potential threat.
Morning came with exhaustion that sharpened rather than dulled focus. I brewed terrible coffee and pulled system logs. Nothing obvious surfaced, which unsettled me more than confirmation would. Clean systems lied better than compromised ones.
Liam arrived late with his jaw tight. He nodded once, professional and distant. I matched his tone.
We worked for hours without speaking. Our code fit together too well. The collaboration felt dangerous because it required trust. When our hands brushed across the keyboard, contact sent a jolt through me.
"I rewrote the routing algorithm," he said finally. "It handles latency spikes more efficiently now."
"I'll integrate it, but we need redundancy planning first."
He looked at me, really looked, as if measuring something internal. "You always think three steps ahead of everyone else."
"I have to because no one else does it."
Something softened briefly in his expression before hardening again.
Professor Dean arrived unannounced during lunch. He praised our progress and asked sharp questions. When he left, the air felt heavier.
Maria called that afternoon.
I stared at the screen until it stopped ringing. Her voicemail followed anyway, syrupy and pleased. I deleted it halfway through.
"You seem distracted today," Liam said.
"I'm focused, which is actually quite different."
He returned to his screen without conviction.
Evening brought tension where productivity failed to hide it. We argued about risk tolerance and speed versus stability.
"You can afford to gamble with this project," he said.
"I'm not gambling, I'm committing everything I have."
"With money you can easily replace if it fails."
"With effort you apparently refuse to acknowledge or see."
The silence afterward felt like something breaking.
He left early again without explanation or eye contact. I stayed, refusing to let emotion interrupt momentum or derail progress. When I finally shut down for the night, I returned to the mansion because avoiding it felt like surrendering entirely.
The house greeted me with familiar coldness. Marble and memory conspired together like they always had.
Maria performed civility at dinner with impressive theatrical discipline. She asked polite questions about work and offered empty encouragement. Margaret watched carefully, measuring reactions, saying nothing of consequence. My father discussed travel plans and upcoming meetings, his distance worn comfortably like an old habit.
Later, Maria cornered me in the hallway upstairs. Her smile pulled brittle and deliberate across her face.
"You look exhausted, working too hard again I imagine."
"I'm building something you wouldn't understand or appreciate."
She laughed softly at that. "You always think that about me, don't you."
Her phone lit up briefly in her hand. I caught a glimpse of a familiar name before she turned the screen away deliberately. My stomach tightened as instinct flared without concrete proof.
"You should be more careful around certain people," she added lightly. "People don't always want what they claim they want."
I walked away before she could elaborate further. My pulse hammered loud in my ears the entire way.
That night I dreamed of systems collapsing around me. Numbers bled red across screens I couldn't control anymore. Hands pulled things apart faster than I could rebuild them. I woke before dawn with my heart racing and certainty shattered.
Liam was already at the office when I arrived. Unusually quiet, his movements stayed precise and carefully restrained. We exchanged minimal words, but something unspoken pressed heavily between us.
Ashley appeared just after midday.
Seeing her again felt like reopening a chapter I had sealed deliberately. She looked the same and different all at once. Confidence had been sharpened by time and experience. Her eyes assessed with practiced neutrality that I recognized immediately.
"Hello Daisy, it really has been quite a long time."
"It has been a very long time indeed," I agreed.
She discussed industry shifts and independent work and projects she couldn't name yet. Her presence unsettled me in ways I didn't fully understand. Old loyalties stirred alongside unresolved fractures from our past.
When she left, Liam exhaled slowly beside me.
"That was completely unexpected, seeing her here today."
"Yes, it certainly was unexpected for me too."
The rest of the day unraveled quietly around us. Code refused to compile cleanly despite multiple attempts. Tests failed inconsistently with no obvious pattern emerging. I traced the issues methodically, my heart sinking as patterns emerged that didn't belong in our system.
Something subtle had changed in the code overnight. Something intentional enough to hide but careless enough to leave fingerprints.
I didn't accuse Liam of anything yet. I simply observed and documented everything carefully.
That evening my phone vibrated with a system notification. A permissions change alert flashed briefly across the screen. My chest tightened as adrenaline surged through me.
I turned back to my screen immediately. My fingers flew across the keyboard, pulling records before they disappeared. Access timestamps blinked into view, overlapping hours when neither of us should have been logged in.
My breath caught as a name surfaced. The activity trail showed logins from an IP address I recognized from our university network.
The office door opened behind me.
Footsteps crossed the floor toward my desk. The timestamps showed access during last night's hours. The same hours when I'd been awake at the mansion, hearing Maria's laughter from downstairs.
"Working late again?" His voice came from directly behind me.
I didn't turn around yet. My hand moved slowly toward the mouse. The screen reflected his figure standing closer than expected.
"Just finishing some debugging work," I said carefully.
The activity log still glowed on screen. Every timestamp. Every unauthorized access. Every modified file.
"Interesting problem you've found there," he said quietly.
His tone had changed completely from this morning. I could feel his eyes reading the same evidence.
My phone buzzed on the desk. Maria's name flashed across the screen with a message preview.
"He knows."
I turned around slowly to face Liam. His expression had shifted into something I didn't recognize.
"How long have you been working with her?" I asked.
He didn't answer immediately. The office felt smaller suddenly.
"That's not the right question," he said finally.
"Then what is the right question I should ask?"
He pulled his phone from his pocket. The screen showed a conversation thread. My name appeared at the top.
"The right question is who else has been accessing our system." He turned the phone toward me. "Because it wasn't just me, Daisy."
Messages scrolled past. Screenshots of our code. Our algorithms. Our proprietary framework that no one should have seen.
All sent to an email address I recognized immediately.
The office door opened again behind Liam.
Ashley walked in, her earlier warmth replaced with something colder. She held a leather portfolio under one arm.
"I see you've finally figured it out," she said.