Chapter 1

May 10, 2010, 5:00 a.m.

Sebastian Reed’s alarm went off at precisely 5:00 a.m. He ran three miles through the quiet city streets before the world fully woke up. The sidewalks were empty, the air crisp, and the only sound was his own steady breathing and the rhythmic impact of his feet against the pavement. The familiarity of it kept him centered.

By 6:30, he was showered, dressed, and had a blended protein shake in hand. By 7:00, he was out the door. He reached Reed Tech’s office on the 15th floor at 7:45, fifteen minutes early. He laid his belongings down carefully, aligning his tablet parallel to the edge of the desk.

Each action was deliberate; a silent affirmation of the stability he depended upon.

When he walked into the Aldrich Pharmaceuticals pitch meeting, the conference room was already full. A polished table lined with executives who clung to their morning coffee like lifelines. Sebastian took his usual seat near the head of the table, sliding his tablet in front of him and tapping through the agenda. Another day, another pitch. Another pitch they couldn’t afford to lose.

The presenter, Jace McAbb, Reed Tech’s VP of Product Strategy, droned on about scalability and security compliance, walking through an aggressive delivery timeline for securing Aldrich’s infrastructure. Network hardening. Endpoint protection. A full security rollout promised faster than the work would realistically allow. Buzzwords layered over a schedule that would fail.

The timeline unfolded in his head. Dependencies stacked and clashed. Failure probabilities assembled on instinct. Forty-three percent by the first quarter. Sixty-eight if they rushed deployment. Had they even consulted a single engineer before locking this timeline?

Schedules like this were a clear indication of why Reed Tech, the company his father had helped found, was circling the drain. He exhaled slowly, fingers drumming against the desk.

“That plan has some risks,” he said, careful to keep his tone even.

The room stilled. Not in alarm, but in recalibration.

At the back of the room, a salt and pepper haired man stood with his hands folded, his expression unreadable. Conrad Reed, CEO of Reed Tech.

His uncle. He didn’t interrupt. He waited.

“Care to elaborate?” Jace asked.

Sebastian leaned back, crossing his arms. “The implementation timeline is tight. Your timeline doesn’t give the engineers time to plan and if we don’t address infrastructure issues first, we’re setting ourselves up for failure.”

Jace stiffened. “So, you’re saying my plan is bad?”

Sebastian kept his expression neutral. “I’m saying we need to mitigate risks before moving forward.”

A few murmurs circled the table. Conrad still didn’t intervene. He simply watched as Jace continued to combat his points on why they needed to keep the accelerated timeline.

“Let’s table this,” Conrad said finally. “Sebastian, put together a counterproposal.”

Sebastian nodded once. “I’ll get on it immediately.”

As the meeting broke, he gathered his things and headed back toward his office.

That was when he heard it.

“That guy thinks he knows everything,” Jace muttered in the hallway, unaware Sebastian was close enough to hear. “Just because he’s the CEO’s nephew doesn’t mean he gets to act like he’s better than everyone.”

Sebastian didn’t react. People underestimated him all the time. They assumed he was where he was because of family. They never once considered that he might simply be the most capable person in the room.

Sebastian’s parents died when he was only eleven and the will surprisingly had not named Conrad as guardian. For reasons Sebastian never understood, it named his best friend’s parents instead, two people with no blood ties to him, but who loved him like their own.

Conrad visited a handful of times during those years. Never staying long. Never really part of his life.

But when Sebastian burned through his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in four years, Conrad started showing up again. Asking about classes. Offering advice about networking. For the first time, he took an interest. Eventually, he offered Sebastian a job at Reed Tech.

The job that brought him here. The job that made him the youngest Chief Technology Officer the corporation had ever had.

Sebastian had accepted. He wasn’t sure if it was trust, ambition, or some fractured desire to prove something. Maybe all three.

He made his way toward his office simultaneously tuning out the world as he checked his phone. The first thing he noticed was that his calendar had been completely rearranged.

He nodded at the lead infrastructure engineer without breaking stride. People didn’t stop him for questions. They waited for him to speak first.

When he entered his office Tiffany, his temp, was sitting at his desk, chewing her gum loudly, twirling a pen between her fingers. Tiffany was fresh out of college and still carried that unmistakable energy, the kind that made everything feel temporary and thrilling. She was the kind of woman who could charm anyone, except Sebastian.

“Oh, hey, boss!” she chirped. “I made some adjustments to your schedule. You’re welcome!”

He clenched his jaw. “Tiffany, what did I say about touching my schedule?”

She blew a bubble, popping it absently as she glanced at the calendar. “Don’t, but I genuinely think you could benefit from loosening up occasionally. It might even make you more productive.”

He stared at her. “Tiffany. Put it back the way I had it.”

She rolled her eyes but started clicking away at his calendar. “Fine, fine. You’re no fun. By the way. What can I get you for lunch? I heard the new taco stand is amazing.”

“Get me my usual.”

She groaned, scrunching her nose and dragging a hand through her already-messy ponytail. Her lip curled like she’d just smelled something foul, and her brow arched with a dramatic flair. “Ugh, Sebastian. That salad you eat is, like, offensive. It’s so green it could photosynthesize.”

Sebastian blinked at her slowly, like he was processing a different dialect of English. “It’s spinach. It did photosynthesize.”

She leaned across the desk dramatically, all elbows and exasperation. “It’s gross.”

“And yet, you still have to get it for me.”

She sighed dramatically. “Not for long, though! Unless—” She trailed off, fiddling with a paperclip on his desk, then glanced up without meeting his eyes. “Maybe I could stay on permanently? I mean, I know I’m not exactly traditional, but I get things done.”

Sebastian’s fingers flexed against his desk. “Tiffany.”

She pouted. “That’s a no, isn’t it?”

“That’s a no.” While most people found her entertaining her lack of discipline drove Sebastian insane.

She sighed, standing. “Fine. I’ll get your depressing lunch. But one day, Reed, you’re gonna wake up and realize you let the best secretary you ever had slip through your fingers.”

“I’ll take my chances,” he called after her as she walked off.

His office sat on the top floor, sleek, sunlit, temperature-controlled to the decimal. The floor was never quiet but he found peace looking out at the city in the moments his eyes could be pulled from his monitors. This was one of those times. He stared out of the window lost in the noise of his mind. It was tiring. It was always tiring.

“Sebastian,” came the voice behind him.

He turned, shaking his head from the cluster of calculations running through his brain so he could focus on the feathery voice at the door.

Brielle leaned against his doorframe, relaxed and familiar. Head of policy compliance. Sharp, composed. For three months last year, his girlfriend.

“You busy this weekend?” he asked, setting his coffee down.

She narrowed her eyes. “Are we doing this again?”

“Spain’s overrated alone.”

“You’re not my type anymore.”

He lifted a brow. “So I used to be?”

“Briefly.” She crossed into the office. “Then I realized you love like you problem-solve, cleanly, quietly, and always at arm’s length.”

He huffed a soft laugh. “That’s harsh.”

“No. That’s honest.” She paused. “The Orion Valley report will be sent to you by the end of the week.”

“Can’t wait,” he said dryly. Another pitch. Another responsibility he had no desire for.

She gave his arm a quick, friendly squeeze and left. The door slid shut behind her.

Fifteen minutes later, he stood alone in the elevator, watching his reflection in the brushed chrome. Crisp shirt. Steady posture. Someone who looked like he belonged.

When the doors closed, he let out a slow breath that hollowed something in his chest.

He’d dated four women since high school. None lasted more than six months.

The pattern was always the same. You’re great, but you’re—

Too driven. Too distant. Too closed off.

Maybe the problem wasn’t them.

Maybe it was him.

Everyone assumed he was fine now. He showed up. He said the right things. He wore the right suit. But the truth was, he hadn’t felt whole in years, just expertly compartmentalized.

Fragments of thought overlapped and competed, unfinished ideas bumping into one another before they could fully form. A half-remembered equation. A line of code that needed refactoring. The echo of a conversation from earlier in the day, replaying without context.

He pressed his tongue to the roof of his mouth, grounding himself, and waited for the ride to end.

That night, Sebastian pulled up Aldrich Pharmaceutical’s system network diagram and started over. Not because the pitch was wrong, but because it wasn’t his. Jace had kept the details close, chasing the win, and Sebastian understood the impulse. Credit didn’t matter. Survival did. If Reed Tech lost the Aldrich contract, they would be bankrupt in less than five years.

He didn’t dwell on it.

Instead, he stripped the proposal down to its bones, rebuilding the architecture the way it would exist once the slides were gone. This was how he worked. Quiet. Precise. The only way to be sure nothing important was being missed.

Hours later his eye caught on an unexpected ending to the building wiring diagram. The layout matched the architectural plans exactly, same footprint, same rooms, same distribution closets.

Nothing extra.

Nothing was missing.

But the routing was wrong.

Redundancy was stacked where redundancy wasn’t needed. Segmentation was surgical, precise, and far tighter than the building’s stated function justified.

Sebastian pulled up the room usage charts and crosschecked them against the wiring paths.

The numbers didn’t line up.

You didn’t build this kind of compartmentalization for open research floors or routine operations. This wasn’t about capacity or expansion. It was about control, who could see what, and who couldn’t, even from inside the same walls.

The building made sense. The wiring did too. Just not for the purpose he’d been given. Sebastian leaned back, aware that the discrepancy wasn’t physical, but intentional. The system was designed to hide activity in plain sight.