Chapter 2

Mark Johnson scoffed loudly behind me.

"You hear that? He's threatening us!" he shouted to a few nearby employees, who snickered in response. "The loser thinks he's a big shot now that he's fired."

Another person added, "He's probably just mad his meal ticket got canceled. What's he going to do, go back to being a nobody?"

I ignored them and kept walking.

Their words didn't matter. Their opinions were based on a lie that Sarah and the Smith family had carefully constructed for three years.

The world knew me by another name.

Online, in the hidden corners of the web where governments and multinational corporations battled for digital supremacy, I was known as 'Hades'.

I was the architect of some of the most impenetrable security systems in existence, a ghost who could build or break fortresses of code at will. No one knew my real identity. That anonymity was my greatest asset.

I became Alex Chase, the live-in husband, for one reason: Mr. Smith.

Years ago, when my own family faced bankruptcy and ruin, he had stepped in. He wasn't a close friend, just a business acquaintance of my father's, but he offered a loan that saved us. He asked for nothing in return. It was a kindness I never forgot.

When I later learned his own company, SmithTech, was struggling with constant cyber-attacks that threatened to sink it, I saw my chance to repay the debt. I approached him, offering my services. I didn't tell him I was Hades. I just told him I was good with computers.

He was hesitant, but desperate. He let me try.

To seal the deal and integrate myself into his life, I agreed to his other, more personal proposal: marry his daughter, Sarah. He hoped I could be a steadying influence on her. I saw it as a simple price to pay for honoring my debt.

So I married her. I built SmithTech a fortress. I spent three years patching every hole, anticipating every threat, creating a system so advanced that it was practically autonomous.

In return, I was treated like garbage.

Sarah resented being married to someone she considered her social and financial inferior. She saw my quiet work as laziness, my lack of interest in high society as a personal failing. The more secure the company became, the less she believed I did anything at all. In her mind, the system ran itself because it was simple, not because a genius was constantly maintaining it from the shadows.

Now, standing on the curb outside the hotel, the humiliation of the party felt distant. It was just the final act of a long, tired play.

I hailed a cab. As it pulled up, the hotel's automatic doors slid open again.

"Wait!"

It was Mark. He was hurrying towards me, a look of fury on his face.

"You're not going anywhere yet," he snarled.

"I'm divorced and fired, Mark. I think I can go wherever I want."

"Sarah wants the car key. The one for the Bentley."

I reached into my pocket and pulled out a single key. It was for the modest sedan I drove, a car I' d bought with my own money from a consulting gig I'd done on the side.

"This is my key," I said. "The Bentley is hers. She has her own key."

"Don't play dumb with me, Chase," he snapped, grabbing for the key. "She said you have a spare. Give it to me."

I held the key firmly.

"This is my personal property. It doesn't open her car."

"You think I believe that? You've been leeching off the Smiths for three years. Nothing you have is your own. Now give me the key before I take it from you."

He was trying to provoke me, to create one last scene for the onlookers still trickling out of the party.

I just looked at him, my patience finally gone.

"You don't want to do this, Mark."