Chapter 28
chapter
twenty-eight
Luka had commandeered my kitchen table and turned it into his personal nerve center. His laptop had sprouted two extra monitors. Cables snaked across the blue and white tiles to a mobile hotspot. Three burner phones sat upturned on a tea towel, each periodically vibrating and flashing.
I placed a fresh mug of coffee, bold and opaque, beside him. It rattled with every keystroke as his fingers blurred across the keyboard.
He didn’t look up. “It’s all in motion.”
He clicked, highlighted, and killed a window so smoothly I almost missed the flicker of satisfaction on his face.
“Just like that?” I asked.
“Not just like that.” Luka’s voice was dry, amused. “It actually took a lot of work, thank you. And a few favors I’ll have to repay.”
A day’s worth of empty takeout containers littered the kitchen counter. The first cup of coffee I’d brought him that morning sat abandoned near the sink, cold.
One of the burner phones buzzed. He glanced at it, jaw tightening, before he flipped it over and muted the vibration.
“Problem?” I asked.
“Adjustment,” he replied with a few deliberate keystrokes.
I sat in the chair caddy-cornered from him and drew my knees to my chest. I fingered the cuff of my jeans, the denim soft, well-worn, and just beginning to fray. “So, what happens now?”
Luka leaned back and stretched, rolling his shoulders and neck. “We wait.” He flexed his fingers once, as if prying them loose from the keyboard.
I let the silence ride, but under the whir of the laptop fans, my nerves were working faster than Luka’s complex lines of code. I watched him, still not used to his presence in my house—his broad silhouette at the table, his legs tucked under the chair like he might bolt at any second.
“You’re really not worried about him?” I asked. “Richard, I mean.”
He blinked, slow and deliberate. “What is there to worry about?”
“Don’t you think he’ll…retaliate?” I twisted the denim over my knee, worrying the fabric between my fingers.
“I hope so.” Luka didn’t look up from the screen. “Desperation makes people sloppy.”
I glanced at the monitors and tried to make sense of the shuffle of windows—one screen stacked with raw code, another with social media pings, and a third cycling through live feeds from BBC, CNN, and the AP.
On the far monitor, what looked like the Hallstrom Group’s internal Slack flickered open—some high-level executive channel already in meltdown.
My stomach knotted at the first few lines I could make out:
@all: Is this for real?
Legal: Please do NOT respond to press enquiries. All media queries to Comms.
@partners: Comms preparing a statement.
The legal message was pinned seconds later.
I watched the news stories propagate, multiplying like bacteria.
At first, it was speculation—anonymous sources and “unconfirmed reports.” Then one outlet cited another.
A third referenced both. Within half an hour, the details hardened into consensus reality.
Richard’s photo was plastered everywhere.
Headlines blared across the feeds.
MULTIPLE SEXUAL MISCONDUCT CLAIMS AGAINST HALLSTROM EXECUTIVE SURFACE
PAST HARASSMENT COMPLAINTS AGAINST FINANCE TITAN UNDER SCRUTINY
HALLSTROM SHARES SLIDE AMID MISCONDUCT ALLEGATIONS
On the financial feed, Hallstrom’s ticker flashed red—down six percent in minutes.
“It’s all happening so fast,” I mused, my eyes barely able to keep up with the rapid-fire barrage of information.
Luka shrugged. “Once the first domino falls, the rest is physics.”
“Where did you learn to do all this?” I asked, gesturing vaguely to the tech empire overtaking my kitchen table. “Surely not from your time in the Croatian army.”
Luka chuckled. “No. Not like this. Besides, that was over twenty years ago. Technology has evolved.” He dropped his gaze to his hands, flexing them open and closed again. “And so have I.”
Sensing an opening—a rare crack in the armor—I leaned in. But before I could speak, one of the burner phones buzzed, startling the thought from my mouth.
Luka glanced at the screen, then picked it up.
It buzzed again.
“What is it?”
He smiled.
“Luka, what is it?” I pressed.
“Richard is trying to contact you.”
I reached for my phone in my back pocket, but Luka shook his head.
“I’ve intercepted his calls and texts. He can’t reach you.”
“How?”
“Call forwarding and a little misdirection.” He tapped the burner lightly. “It won’t hold forever.”
That didn’t calm me.
“You could have told me.”
“I just did.”
I stared at the table, the whorled pattern in the faux wood grain swimming at the edges of my vision. “So…what’s he saying?”
He slid the phone across the table, screen angled toward me. I hesitated, then picked it up, sinking my teeth into my bottom lip.
We need to speak, Alex. This has gotten out of hand.
I don’t know what game you think you’re playing, but you’ve made a massive mistake. You’ve put yourself in a precarious position. This isn’t how these things are handled.
Come now, be reasonable. We’ve dealt with situations like this internally before. Escalating it only hurts everyone involved.
My stomach tightened. The word “internally” echoed longer than it should have.
Little fox, do you really think you’re the first girl to try this? You’ll get tired before I do. I always come out on top.
I set the phone down—slowly, deliberately—in front of Luka.
“Take this,” I said, punctuating my thought with a shaky breath, “before I do something stupid.”
“Respond, you mean?”
“Yes.”
He nodded.
I stood and paced between the table and the kitchen barstools. “Could we send that to the police?”
Luka narrowed his eyes. “He can’t reach you, mila.”
I shook my head. “No, it’s not that. I mean, can we send those texts to the police to help build the case? Bring him down.”
His face eased, and he leaned back in the chair and studied me for a long moment. “We can…”
“But?”
“The police are one lever. Not the only lever.” He tapped his index finger on the burner phone. “And, in this case, not the most effective. Especially if you’d prefer to stay out of the fire.”
“Okay.” I folded my arms tight across my middle. “What’s the other lever? What are you thinking?”
“I’m thinking this information won’t do much sitting in a police file.
” He glanced at one monitor, where Richard’s face was already multiplying across headlines.
“But the press?” He shrugged, light and easy.
“They pounce. It spreads through every channel he depends on. Maximum character damage for him, and you don’t become the story. ”
My breath turned shallow. My heart jackhammered at the base of my throat. My mind split in two—one half urging caution, the other chanting do it, do it, do it, until the words didn’t even sound like words.
Another text message hit the burner, so hard and sudden it vibrated across the tabletop.
Answer me, you stupid cunt.
I let out a slow hiss, not sure if I was going to cry, laugh, or vomit. There was something almost beautiful in how Richard had stripped away the pretense, all the silk-and-steel vocabulary of the conference room. This was the creature at the core: blunt, ugly, and terrified.
Luka didn’t flinch. “He knows he’s cornered,” he said, voice so calm it was almost comforting. “Now he has to keep digging.”
I stared at the screen, the words spreading through my veins like venom. The kitchen lights flickered, or maybe it was just my vision tunneling.
I didn’t want to be the girl they wrote about in the afterword—the one who flinched, who stepped away from the fight, who let a man like Richard keep his kingdom.
“Fuck it,” I said. “Let’s do it.”
Luka didn’t smile, but approval settled in his expression. He turned back to the keyboard, fingers moving—not frantic, not triumphant. Focused.
A thousand ways to say thank you jammed in my throat. None made it to the surface. Instead, I sat—knees to chest—watching him work.
He paused once, scanning a window. Clicked. Dragged. Sent.
Then he leaned back, folding his arms. “It’s out.”
He nodded to the screen where the ripple had already begun: newsfeeds refreshing, social media accelerating, the Hallstrom Slack channel unraveling in real time.
The smile that tugged at my mouth felt dark. For the first time, I felt powerful. In control.
I’d had power before—or what passed for it. Deals closed. Contracts signed. Decisions that always seemed to benefit someone higher up the food chain than me.
This was different. This didn’t flow upward. It started and stayed with me.
My phone rang twice, followed by a cascade of text notifications. All from Greg.
I ignored them and put the phone on silent.