Christian’s world tilted on its axis. The air in the boardroom turned thin, impossible to breathe. Scarlett’s words echoed in the cavernous space, each one a hammer blow against the crumbling walls of his reality. ‘Mr. Ethan, I heard you need my money?’ His hands, the hands of an Alpha used to crushing his rivals, gripped the armrests of his wheelchair. The polished chrome bit into his palms. His knuckles were white. He stared up at her, at the woman who had served him coffee that very morning with downcast eyes. Those eyes were not downcast now. They were twin chips of ice, burning with a cold fire he had never seen before. This was not Scarlett, the meek orphan. This was an empress holding court, and he was the jester on his knees. “You…?” he managed to choke out, his voice a raw whisper. “Avery Group… you’re…” “The sole heir,” she finished for him, her voice smooth as silk and sharp as glass. “The woman you called a charity case. The wife you let your mistress spit on. Karma, Christian. It’s a beautiful thing to watch.” The betrayal was a physical pain, so sharp and sudden it felt like a knife twisting in his gut. Every memory of his cruelty towards her flashed before his eyes. Every insult. Every dismissal. Every time he had looked at her with contempt while secretly hunting for the very billionaire who could save him. Suddenly, the boardroom doors burst open. Liam, his most trusted executive, stumbled in, his face pale with terror. “Sir! It’s a catastrophe!” Christian tore his gaze from Scarlett, his CEO instincts flaring. “What is it?” “The servers! All of them!” Liam gasped, holding up a tablet where red warning signals flashed like frantic heartbeats. “We’re under a full-scale cyber assault. They bypassed every firewall. They’re wiping our data, stealing our proprietary tech… we’re losing everything! The tech team says we have less than five minutes before total system collapse!” The room erupted into chaos. Executives shouted into phones. Tech support streamed in, their faces grim. Christian felt a cold dread wash over him, colder even than Scarlett’s gaze. This was it. The final blow. The traitor he had been hunting with his fake paralysis had finally made their move. “Lock them out! Now!” Christian roared, his voice cracking with desperation. “We can’t, sir!” a frantic tech specialist yelled back. “The code is a ghost! It’s nothing we’ve ever seen. It’s rewriting our defenses as we build them! It’s… it’s perfect.” Amidst the panic, one person remained perfectly still. Scarlett watched the unraveling of Christian’s empire with a bored, almost disdainful expression. She took a slow sip of water from a crystal goblet, the sound of her swallowing impossibly loud in the chaos. “How utterly predictable,” she murmured, setting the glass down with a soft click. She walked towards the main terminal, her heels clicking a death march on the marble floor. The panicked men parted before her as if she were royalty. She looked down at Christian, a faint, merciless smile playing on her lips. “Your kingdom is burning, little king. And your knights are useless.” Christian’s jaw tightened. “What would you know about it?” he spat, the insult automatic, a reflex from years of looking down on her. Her smile widened. It didn’t reach her eyes. “I know everything.” She turned to the head of his IT department. “Give me your seat.” The man stared at her, dumbfounded. “Ma’am, this is a Level-5 crisis. With all due respect, you need to–” “Get up,” Scarlett commanded. Her voice was not loud, but it held an absolute authority that made the man flinch and immediately vacate the chair. The entire room fell silent. All eyes were on her. She sat down, her posture straight, her focus absolute. For a moment, she closed her eyes. When they opened, the last trace of the submissive girl was gone forever. In her place sat a predator. Her fingers descended upon the keyboard. They didn’t just type; they danced. A blur of motion, a symphony of clicks that filled the silent room. Lines of brilliant green code flooded the screen, a language no one in the room could comprehend. It was elegant, brutal, and impossibly fast. Liam stared, his mouth agape. “What is she doing?” “She’s not defending,” the IT head whispered, his voice filled with awe. “She’s attacking.” Scarlett’s expression was one of pure, lethal concentration. She built a firewall in seconds that would have taken his team weeks. She tracked the attacker’s signal through a dozen decoy servers in a minute. Then, with a final, vicious keystroke, she launched her counter-offensive. On the main screen, the red alerts vanished. Every single one. Green shields of impenetrable code locked into place. An audible sigh of relief went through the room. But Scarlett wasn't finished. A new window popped up, showing a live feed. It was a server room, somewhere across the world. As they watched, the servers began to smoke. Then spark. Then one after another, they burst into flames. She had not just stopped the attack. She had annihilated the attacker. Total elapsed time: two minutes and forty-seven seconds. Scarlett leaned back in the chair, a satisfied look on her face. The room was utterly silent, the only sound the faint crackle from the speakers of the burning server room on screen. The head of IT fell to his knees, staring at a single line of code she had left behind like a signature on a masterpiece. His voice was a choked, reverent whisper. “That encryption… that kill-switch protocol… Oh my god. There’s only one person in the world who can do that.” He looked from the screen to Scarlett, his eyes wide with a terrifying understanding. “It’s her. She’s Rosewood.” The name struck Christian like a bolt of lightning. Rosewood. The legendary underworld hacker. The digital ghost he had been prepared to offer a fortune to, the one person he believed could save his company from the traitor within. The savior he had been hunting for months. And she was his wife. The wife he’d just divorced. His vision blurred. The entire world collapsed into the face of the woman sitting at the terminal. He saw every moment of his cruelty, every act of humiliation, not as the actions of a powerful alpha putting a nobody in her place, but as a fool desecrating a goddess. He had thrown away his salvation. He had tortured his only hope. He looked at her, truly looked at her for the first time, and saw not the maid, not the orphan, but the empress who held his entire world in her slender hands. The need to stand, to break free from his self-imposed prison and beg for a mercy he didn’t deserve, was overwhelming. Scarlett rose from the chair and walked back toward him, stopping right before his wheelchair. Her cold eyes drifted down to his legs, a knowing, cruel glint in them. “You went to all this trouble to find a traitor,” she said, her voice a deadly purr. “But the biggest traitor in this company isn't hiding on your network, Christian. He’s hiding in that chair.”

Chapter 8: The Miracle Curer