RULE NUMBER ONE: DON'T MESS WITH MR. BURGESS

CHAPTER 9

Slayde didn't answer immediately. 

He slowly turned his head, locking eyes with Brec Elsher.

Brec didn't flinch. 

She maintained her ground, a calculating frown etching her face as she stared back. 

Beneath the glittering Austrian chandeliers, the silence between them turned palpable.

"Does it matter who I am?" Slayde finally asked, his low voice slicing through the quiet. 

He didn't offer a name, nor did his expression soften. He simply gestured toward the frozen keyboards with a tilt of his chin. 

"I'm just here to stop these amateurs before they make a mistake your empire can't recover from."

Brec’s frown deepened. 

Her mind raced. 

Why did this stranger in a midnight-black suit care about her logistics data? 

How could he look at a military-grade algorithmic wipe and casually call it a mistake?

Before she could press him, the lead cybersecurity specialist snapped.

"A mistake?!" he roared, his face flushing a furious, humiliated red. 

He stood up so fast his chair skidded backward across the marble. 

"Who do you think you are, walking in here in a fancy suit and talking down to us? We are certified tier-one forensic analysts!"

"Exactly!" the second technician chimed in, glaring with pure venom to shift the blame before the gathered elites. "The mainframe is undergoing a synchronized, multi-layered quantum execution. The source code is mutating every three seconds. You're just trying to make us look incompetent to show off in front of Miss Elsher!"

They stepped forward, attempting to puff out their chests. But Slayde didn't move an inch. 

He stood relaxed, hands loosely shoved into his pockets, looking down at them as if they were insects. 

The absolute indifference radiating from his stance made the technicians halt a few feet away, their courage faltering.

Realizing they couldn't intimidate him physically, the lead analyst sneered. 

"What do you even know about high-level data architecture? You think that because you can use a smartphone, you can halt a sovereign-level ledger breach? This isn't a playground script. One wrong keystroke from a clueless fraud like you, and the entire maritime network goes dark permanently!"

He turned aggressively towards Brec. 

"Miss Elsher, have security kick this clown out right now. He is nothing but a dangerous distraction. Every second we waste listening to his garbage is a second the hacker uses to bleed your servers dry.”

Brec didn't answer. 

Her sharp eyes flicked from the sweating technicians to Slayde. 

He hadn't shifted his weight; he hadn't raised his voice. 

While the entire room drowned in high-stakes adrenaline, he remained unnervingly calm.

‘Why is he so calm?’ Brec wondered. 

In her world, men only held themselves like this when they possessed absolute, crushing certainty over their environment. 

Either he was insane, or he knew something the rest of them didn't.

Slayde glanced lazily at the analysts, his voice dropping into a flat, thoroughly bored drawl.

"I couldn't care less about your reputation, your client's funds, or your petty issues," Slayde said, his eyes cutting through them like glass. "I am only standing here to stop you from increasing my workload. If you keep typing the absolute nonsense you've been executing for the last five minutes, what should take me ten minutes to fix is going to take hours. And I have far more important things to deal with tonight than cleaning up after certified tier-one idiots."

Before the analysts could explode, Slayde’s gaze hardened. 

A suffocating glare froze the breath in their throats.

"Do not put your hands back on those terminals," Slayde commanded. "Step away. Now."

Suddenly, the heavy overhead speakers crackled again.

"Well, well, well... look what we have here," the hacker taunted, his synthesized voice dripping with newfound amusement. "An interesting one has finally decided to speak up. I was getting so incredibly bored watching those corporate dinosaurs weep over their pocket change."

The hacker paused, a smug, heavy sigh vibrating through the audio system as he threw a vicious side remark at the frozen tech team.

"Listen to the man, boys," the hacker mocked. "He's absolutely right. Every counter-patch you've deployed has just been feeding my encryption algorithms. You're practically doing my job for me! Honestly, who taught you how to build a firewall? Did you get your tier-one certifications out of a cereal box, or are you just naturally this incompetent?"

The three analysts flushed with rage, refusing to believe the humiliating truth blaring from the speakers.

"It's a trick!" the lead analyst shouted, his hands trembling as he stared at his locked screen. "The hacker is manipulating the audio feed to mess with our heads! He’s trying to break our focus because our firewalls were actually starting to put up a fight!"

Brec flinched slightly. 

The subtle twitch of her shoulders didn't escape Slayde's notice. 

The immense pressure of her logistics empire hanging in the balance was wearing through her composure. 

She turned her head slowly, preparing to demand answers, to ask Slayde if he truly possessed the power to stop the bleeding.

Before she could speak, the second technician pointed a mocking finger directly at Slayde's face.

"Oh, please! Look at this guy!" the technician jeered. "You all are actually listening to this fraud? Think about it! Why would a stranger walk into a VVIP gala and tell us to drop our equipment at the exact second the hacker hijacks the audio? He's probably working with him!"

"Exactly! It's an inside job!" the third analyst chimed in, a triumphant grin breaking through his panic. "The hacker is lying through his teeth to build this guy up! Look at him—does he look like he knows anything about data architecture? He hasn't touched a single keyboard! None of us have ever seen his face. He isn't part of any global firm, he isn't a certified government contractor… he's a complete nobody!"

The lead analyst stepped forward, glaring with pure malice. 

"Miss Elsher, this man is a security threat. He’s actively obstructing our countermeasures to ensure the breach succeeds. I demand that plaza security take him into custody immediately until the federal cyber units arrive!"

Beneath the gold-leaf ceiling, the synthesized voice of the hidden hacker erupted into another low, patronizing chuckle, entirely ignoring the analysts' desperate accusations.