Chapter 2

02

A suffocating wave of dread crushed everyone in the room.

Madelyn's calm, composed facade finally cracked, while Ethan clung to her waist, sobbing uncontrollably.

"Maddie, save me! Devon Hayes is a ruthless monster! If I fall into his hands, he'll torture me to death!"

Madelyn turned to me, her voice cold and unyielding.

"Gabe, as the head of security architecture, you failed to arrive in time to neutralize the threat. This catastrophe is your responsibility!"

Outraged murmurs broke out among our colleagues, but Madelyn cut them off with a razor-sharp glare.

"If anyone has an issue with my decision, feel free to sign the liability report yourselves!"

I stared at her, feeling a chill run through my veins.

This woman was my lawful wife, the person who was supposed to stand by me through thick and thin.

Yet from the moment she walked in, she hadn't looked at me once, and now she was openly trying to frame me for another man's crime.

Back when we first founded this cybersecurity company, an early technical flaw of mine caused millions in client damages.

I thought I was heading straight to federal prison.

It was Madelyn who swallowed her pride, bowed before the clients, and paid tenfold compensation out of her own pocket to shield me.

"If I don't protect my man, who will?"

"Go conquer the world, Gabe. I'll always have your back."

Those vows were still etched into my memory, yet somehow, we had drifted light-years apart.

Pushing down the bitterness in my chest, I spoke firmly.

"I'm not signing a single thing."

Madelyn walked up to me, leaning in close as her voice dropped to a sinister whisper.

"Your father is still in the hospice facility. If you don't want me pulling the plug on his treatment, you'll sign this paper right now!"

I stared at her in sheer disbelief, my fury boiling over.

"Madelyn, do you have any conscience left? My dad took ten stab wounds for you when our office got raided! That's why he's paralyzed!"

"Now you're willing to let him die just to save your little boy toy?"

My shout drew every eye in the room.

The team looked at Madelyn and Ethan with undisguised disgust.

Madelyn didn't care in the slightest, casually waving her phone in my face.

"Are you signing, or not?"

"Hold on. Let me speak with him."

Just as I was about to yield under the sheer pressure of my father's life, Director Ross grabbed my arm and pulled me into the central control booth.

"I know your wife is cheating on you and you don't want to get involved," he whispered urgently.

"But the rest of our staff are completely innocent. I just checked the telemetry, and there's still a tiny sliver of hope."

"The cryogenic facility has five independent vaults. Four are already compromised beyond repair, but Vault Five―where Devon's sample is kept―hasn't hit the critical threshold yet."

"You built this entire architecture from scratch. You're the only person alive who can purge the trojan and force a system cooling cycle within ten minutes."

"I'm begging you, Gabe. Save our lives."

I didn't want innocent people dying over this mess, so I gave him a nod.

"On two conditions. First, transfer my father to a secure, private medical facility immediately. Second, send every byte of surveillance footage from last night until now directly to Devon Hayes."

My eyes gleamed with cold resolve.

If they wanted me to take the fall, I was going to drag them straight into the spotlight.

"Done," Ross agreed without hesitation.

He pulled out his phone and executed both requests right in front of me.

I pulled out my rugged laptop, hooked the data cable directly into the central terminal, and let my fingers fly across the keys.

Using the proprietary anti-intrusion software I had developed earlier, I wiped out the malware in under five minutes.

I restored the corrupted root commands and immediately triggered an emergency liquid nitrogen injection.

The cooling mechanism roared to life, and the temperature in Vault Five plummeted rapidly.

Devon Hayes's sample was saved!

Having pushed my brain to its absolute limit, I rubbed the bridge of my nose in exhaustion.

The very next second, a brutal force slammed me face-first into the concrete floor.