30. Ethan
CHAPTER THIRTY
Ethan
The first thing I register is warmth.
Addy.
She’s tucked against me, one arm draped across my chest in a way that suggests sleep claimed her mid-thought rather than with intention. Her breathing is slow, even.
I don’t move immediately.
There’s a part of me that resists the instinct to extract myself, to reset, to reestablish the boundaries that have defined the last four years with near clinical precision.
Instead, I stay where I am.
The city beyond the glass is just beginning to shift into morning. Light filters in gradually, catching on the edges of the room, outlining her hair where it spills across the pillow. There’s an unguardedness about her I can’t get enough of.
It occurs to me that I’ve underestimated how quickly she’s become integrated.
Not into the structure of the household. That was immediate.
Into me.
That’s the problem.
My hand rests against her back, fingers splayed slightly, as though confirming she’s real.
She shifts slightly, pressing closer without waking.
The response is automatic. Unfiltered. I tighten my hold by a fraction. Reckless. That’s the word that surfaces…
There’s a clarity to it I haven’t experienced in a long time. A lack of calculation that should concern me more than it does. I’m aware of the implications. The variables. The inevitable complications.
Eventually, I force myself to move because the office needs me. Addy murmurs something unintelligible as I shift out from beneath her, her hand trailing briefly across my arm before settling back against the mattress. She doesn’t wake.
Good.
I dress quietly, movements efficient. There’s a familiarity to the process that helps reestablish order. Shirt, watch, jacket. Each step a return to something structured that doesn’t involve the unpredictable presence of a woman currently asleep in my bed who shouldn't be there.
And yet she is.
I pause at the doorway.
Look back once.
Then leave.
“You’re early,” Sara says the moment I step into the office.
“So are you.”
“Something came up.”
I step past her into the office, setting my things down. “Tell me.”
Jeffrey exhales, running a hand through his hair. “You’re not going to like it. Things still aren’t working fully.”
At first glance, it appears intact. Structured. Functional. “Define the issue.”
Jeffrey points. “We ran a full diagnostic this morning. There’s interference in the core logic loop. It’s subtle, but it compounds.”
“How long has it been there?”
“That’s the problem,” Sara replies. “We don’t know.”
I lean back slightly, processing. “The failsafe?”
“Still operational,” Jeffrey says. “But it’s not compensating the way it should.”
“Because it’s not being triggered correctly.”
“Exactly.”
I look at the code again. There’s a pattern to it. This isn’t the kind of error that occurs through oversight. It seems intentional. “Who’s accessed this system in the last forty-eight hours?”
Sara answers immediately. “Internal team only. Restricted clearance.”
“List them.”
She does.
“Have you attempted a rollback?”
Jeffrey nods. “Twice. It stabilizes temporarily, then the corruption reappears.”
“So it’s persistent.”
“Yeah.”
“That suggests an embedded trigger.”
Sara folds her arms. “We thought the same thing.”
I narrow my eyes. “Fix it.”
Jeffrey huffs out a short laugh. “We’re trying.”
“Try faster.”
I step closer to the screen, isolating sections of the code, tracking the inconsistencies. There’s logic here. Structure. Whoever did this knew exactly where to apply pressure without causing immediate failure.
Which means, “They wanted it to pass initial checks.”
Sara nods. “And fail later.”
“At the demo.”
Jeffrey exhales. “That would be catastrophic.”
“Yes.”
I straighten. “We don’t have the luxury of assumptions. I want full system isolation. No external access. No modifications without clearance.”
“You’ve got it,” Sara says.
“And I want a clean rebuild of the affected sequence.”
Jeffrey grimaces. “That’ll take time.”
“Then start.”
Waking up beside Addy felt dangerously simple.
This doesn’t.
This feels like standing in a cockpit while warning alarms trigger one after another.
Hours pass, unnoticed. The code becomes increasingly familiar, the inconsistencies more apparent the deeper I go. There’s a structure beneath it that doesn’t align with our current architecture.
My phone vibrates against the desk. I ignore it, assuming it’ll stop.
It doesn’t.
The second buzz drags my attention away from the code long enough to see Bryce’s name lighting up the screen.
Fuck.
I answer without thinking. “Now isn’t a good time.”
“Yeah, I figured,” he says, tone lighter than the situation warrants. “You’ve been ignoring me.”
“I’ve been occupied.”
“With her?”
Irritation flashes hot beneath my ribs because of the way he says it.
Casual. Dismissive. Like Addy is temporary.
I don’t respond.
“Look, about last night—”
“I don’t have time for this.”
“Ethan—”
“There’s an issue with the system.”
That stops him. “What kind of issue?”
“More corruption in the demo sequence. In the core loop.”
“Huh.”
It’s not the response I expect. “What?”
“Just interesting timing.”
I don’t engage with that. “If you called to discuss dinner, this isn’t the moment.”
“I didn’t.” Another pause. “You said corruption in the core loop?”
I’m barely hearing him because my eyes are so fixed on the screen. “Yes.”
“Failsafe still intact?”
“For now.”
“Rollback not holding?”
My attention sharpens slightly.
That’s a specific guess.
But Bryce worked on early stabilization architecture with me for years. He knows how these systems fail under pressure.
“No,” I say.
A breath on the other end. “Okay. I might have an idea.”
That grabs me. Bryce does know his stuff. “Go on.”
“There’s a patch you can apply. Temporary, but it should stabilize the sequence long enough for the demo.”
“We don’t do temporary fixes.”
“You do if the alternative is a public failure.” I don’t respond immediately. “Ethan, I built part of that system. I know how it behaves under stress. If the corruption’s sitting where I think it is, you’re not going to isolate it in time.”
“And your solution?”
“A bypass.”
I rub my eyes. “Explain.”
“It reroutes the affected logic through a secondary pathway. Keeps the system functional without triggering the corrupted segment.”
I consider that. “Risk?”
“There’s always risk.”
Of course Bryce says it like that. Casual, detached, like risk is theoretical instead of catastrophic.
My jaw tightens. “Define it.”
He chuckles softly. “It’s a patch, not a cure.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It holds the system together. That’s the answer.”
I glance at the code again. At the fault, at the timeline. “How quickly can you send it?”
“Already did.”
Of course he did.
I pull up my inbox. There it is.
“Why?” I ask.
A beat. “What do you mean?”
“Why are you helping?”
A soft exhale. “Because despite everything, I don’t want to see you fail.”
I don’t respond to that.
Under normal circumstances, I’d push back harder on an unverified patch.
But Bryce has always had a bad habit of forcing himself into problems like he can’t tolerate being irrelevant to the solution.
It’s reckless, not criminal.
Plus, the gala is coming way too fast.
“Look,” he adds, tone shifting again, less controlled now, “we can deal with everything else later. You’ve got a problem. I’m offering a solution.”
I end the call without another word.
The file sits there, waiting.
Sara steps back into the office. “We’ve isolated the system.”
Jeffrey follows. “Still no clean fix.”
I look at them. Then at the screen, at the code, at the clock. Time, as always, is the variable that matters most.
“There may be another option,” I say.
Sara’s eyes narrow slightly. “May?”
I turn the screen toward them, pulling up the file. “External patch.”
Jeffrey frowns. “From who?”
I don’t answer immediately because the answer is the problem, and I already know it.