From Useless Son-in-Law to Hacker King

The Question

Clara collapsed back onto the sofa, sobbing into her hands. "She's going to destroy us. Her own stubbornness is going to destroy this family."

William sat in silence for a long moment, staring at the door Naomi had slammed. Then he spoke quietly. "Robert. Call Marcus. Tell him we're seriously considering his father's investment. But give Naomi some time to process this."

"Time?" Clara looked up, mascara running down her face. "We don't have time!"

"We have thirty-six hours," William said. "If Naomi doesn't come around by tomorrow evening, then we make the decision for her."

Robert pulled out his phone and walked toward the study, already dialing.

Lucas slipped out of the room. Nobody noticed. They never did.

He found Naomi in the hallway, leaning against the wall with her eyes closed. She looked completely drained, like someone had pulled all the energy out of her body and left just a shell.

"Naomi," he said softly.

She opened her eyes. "What?"

"Thank you. For not giving up on me."

Naomi laughed, and it was the saddest sound Lucas had ever heard. "Giving up on you? Lucas, I don't even know what I'm holding onto anymore."

"I know I'm not—"

"Save it." She pushed off the wall, and for the first time in months, she really looked at him. Not through him. Not past him. At him. "I'm tired. I'm so tired of defending you when you give me nothing to defend. Nothing to prove them wrong with."

Lucas felt his throat tighten. "I know."

"Do you?" Her voice broke. "Do you know what it's like to make a promise and watch everyone think you're a fool for keeping it? To believe there's something more to you but never seeing it? To hope and hope and hope and get nothing back?"

"Naomi—"

"I made a promise three years ago when I married you," she said, tears spilling down her cheeks. "For better or worse. I keep my promises. Even when everyone thinks I'm wrong. Even when maybe..." She stopped, took a shaky breath. "Even when maybe they're right."

The words hit Lucas like a punch to the gut.

"Even if you think I'm worthless?" he asked quietly.

Naomi stared at him for a long moment. Really looked at him like she was trying to see past the surface, past three years of disappointment and silence and separate bedrooms. "Are you? Worthless?"

Lucas met her eyes. "What do you think?"

She was quiet. Searching his face for something. Anything. "I think I don't really know who you are. But you're my husband. That has to mean something." Her voice dropped to a whisper. "It has to."

She walked away before he could respond, leaving him alone in the hallway with words stuck in his throat that he couldn't say. Words that would explain everything and destroy everything at the same time.

Lucas stood there until he couldn't hear her footsteps anymore. Until the house went quiet except for Clara's muffled crying from the living room and Robert's voice in the study making calls.

Then he went upstairs to his room and locked the door.

He pulled the encrypted laptop from its hiding place and set it on the desk. His fingers moved across the keyboard, and it was like coming home. Like muscle memory that had never really left, just gone dormant for three years.

Code filled the screen. The trace protocol he'd started last night was still running, still hunting through layers of digital security for Victor's signature.

But now Lucas added something new. A counter-hack. He started mapping Victor's malware from the inside, looking for the weaknesses that CyberShield had missed. Because they didn't know Victor. Didn't know how he thought, how he built his attacks, where his arrogance would make him careless.

CyberShield had tried to break through the front door. Lucas was looking for the window Victor always left unlocked because he thought he was too clever to get caught.

His phone buzzed. A text in the family group chat from Robert: **Marcus coming for dinner tomorrow night. Everyone be there. Dress appropriately.**

Lucas stared at the message. Tomorrow night. Less than thirty-six hours before they made the decision for Naomi. Before they traded her to Marcus Chen like a business transaction.

He looked back at his screen and typed faster.

The code scrolled by, algorithms searching, patterns emerging. And then—

There.

His trace protocol pinged. Found something.

A digital fingerprint buried in the malware. A relay server in Estonia that was routing the encrypted data. And the routing pattern—Lucas leaned closer to the screen—the routing pattern was pure Victor. Complicated but with a signature flourish that served no purpose except ego. The digital equivalent of signing your name.

Lucas's fingers flew across the keyboard, following the trail deeper. There. A weakness in the encryption. A backdoor Victor had left himself, probably for remote access to monitor the ransom payment. The kind of thing only someone who knew Victor's old habits would recognize.

It was brilliant. It was also Victor's fatal flaw. He'd always been too proud of his own cleverness.

Lucas started exploiting the weakness, writing code to slip through the backdoor, to map the entire attack from the inside.

His screen filled with data. File structures. Encryption keys. The location of Wright Industries' data, locked away but intact. And something else. A countdown timer. Not forty-eight hours. Thirty-six.

Victor had lied about the deadline. Probably to watch them panic.

Lucas kept typing, kept digging. And then he found it. The kill switch. The command that would release all the data and delete the malware.

He had it.

He had Victor.

Lucas sat back in his chair, staring at the screen. His finger hovered over the enter key.

One command. That's all it would take. One command and Wright Industries would be saved. The data restored. The crisis over.

But they'd want to know how. They'd ask questions. And Lucas had no answers he could give them without revealing everything.

His phone buzzed again. This time a text from Naomi, just to him: **If you really can't help, I understand. I'll do what I have to do.**

Lucas read it three times.

She was going to say yes to Marcus. She was going to sacrifice herself to save her family.

Unless Lucas did something.

He looked at his screen. At the kill switch that would save everything.

Then he looked at his phone. At Naomi's message.

His fingers moved across the keyboard.

He had Victor now.

The question was what to do about it.