Chapter 56 FIFTY-SIX
Callum's breathing was deep and even beside her from the kind of sleep that came easy to people who didn't have secrets eating them alive. Lennox stared at the ceiling and counted the hours until sunrise, her mind replaying Victor's words on an endless loop.
Almost like you scrubbed it clean.
She'd been so careful. Years of being Cipher had taught her how to cover her tracks, how to build a believable backstory that would hold up under casual scrutiny. But Victor wasn't doing casual scrutiny anymore. He was digging, and apparently he had the resources to dig deep.
Around four in the morning she gave up on sleep. Slipped out of bed carefully so she wouldn't wake Callum and went back to her room. Locked the door and opened her laptop with hands that wouldn't quite stop shaking.
The security logs didn't lie. Someone had disabled her encryption software at 2:47 PM yesterday, right in that window when she and Callum had both been at his office for a meeting with the PR team. They'd been looking for forty-seven minutes before giving up and covering their tracks.
She pulled up her system's deeper diagnostics, the ones that required three different passwords and a fingerprint scan to access. This was where she kept the real security, the layers that protected the hidden partition where all her Cipher work lived.
They'd tried to access it. She could see the attempts, multiple password failures, an effort to bypass the encryption that had ultimately failed. Whoever had done this knew what they were doing but they weren't good enough to crack her setup. Not yet, anyway.
But they'd been close. Close enough to see that there was something hidden there, even if they couldn't access it.
Victor's face appeared in her mind, that fatherly smile that never reached his eyes. The way he'd positioned himself in her life from the beginning, always hovering at the edges, always watching. His pointed questions at dinner about her digital footprint. The timing of it all.
She pulled up the building's security footage from yesterday afternoon, something she probably shouldn't have access to but had figured out how to reach months ago. The penthouse had cameras in the hallways and lobby but not inside the units themselves.
There. Victor entering the building at 2:33 PM, fourteen minutes before someone had accessed her laptop. The timestamp matched too perfectly to be coincidence.
But it wasn't proof. Not really. Victor visited sometimes, stopped by to check on Callum or discuss company business. He had access to the penthouse because Callum trusted him, considered him practically family after all these years working with their father.
Still, everything about his behavior lately, the way he'd been circling closer and asking sharper questions, the suspicious timing of this breach right after he'd started openly questioning her background. It all pointed in one direction even if she couldn't prove it definitively.
Which meant she needed to move faster. Needed to finish this investigation and get proof of the embezzlement before Victor figured out who she really was and used it to destroy everything.
She was pulling up her Cipher files, running through the latest financial trails she'd uncovered, when she heard footsteps in the hallway outside her door.
A soft knock. "Lennox?"
She closed her laptop. "Yeah?"
"Can I come in?"
She unlocked the door. Callum stood there looking rumpled and worried, hair sticking up like he'd been running his hands through it.
"It's almost five in the morning," he said. "Why are you in here?"
"Couldn't sleep."
"So you came in here to work?" He glanced at the laptop, then back at her face. "What's going on?"
"Nothing. I told you, I'm just tired."
"That's not nothing. You've been weird since last night. Since Victor talked to you." He leaned against the doorframe. "What did he actually say?"
"I already told you. Just small talk about how we met and my background. Normal stuff."
"Normal stuff doesn't make you look like someone just threatened your life."
"He didn't threaten me."
"Then why are you terrified?"
"I'm not terrified. I'm tired and stressed about these constant events and everyone staring at me trying to figure out why you married me. That's all."
His jaw tightened. "Don't do that."
"Do what?"
"Shut me out. Lie to me about what's wrong when I can see something's eating at you." He moved into the room, close enough that she had to tilt her head back to look at him. "We said we cared about each other. Remember? Yesterday after I acted like a possessive asshole at the coffee shop. You said you cared."
"I do care."
"Then talk to me. Tell me what's actually happening in your head because I can't help if you won't let me in."
She wanted to. The words were right there, sitting on her tongue ready to spill out. I'm a hacker. I've been investigating your company for months. Victor knows something and he's coming for me and I don't know how to stop him without exposing everything.
But she couldn't say any of it. Because once she started talking she wouldn't be able to stop, and then he'd know the truth about who she was and why she'd really married him. He'd know that their entire relationship was built on a foundation of lies and manipulation, even if she hadn't meant for it to become real.
"There's nothing to tell," she said. "You're making this into something bigger than it is."
"Am I? Because from where I'm standing, my wife is hiding in her room at five in the morning staring at her computer like it contains nuclear codes, and she won't tell me why."
"Maybe because you're being paranoid."
"I'm not paranoid. I'm paying attention. There's a difference." His voice was getting louder, frustration bleeding through. "You've been distracted for weeks. Secretive about what you're working on, jumpy whenever anyone asks about your past. And now Victor says two sentences to you and you completely shut down."
"I didn't shut down."
"You barely spoke for the rest of the dinner. You keep checking your laptop obsessively. You look at me sometimes like you're carrying the weight of the world and won't let me help." He ran a hand through his hair. "Just tell me what's wrong. Whatever it is, we can deal with it together."
"There's nothing wrong."
"Stop lying to me."
"I'm not lying. You're just creating problems where there aren't any."
That landed wrong. She saw it in the way his expression shifted, hurt flashing across his face before anger covered it.
"That's what you think this is? Me creating problems?"
"I don't know what this is. But I know I'm allowed to have things that are private, things I don't share with you."
His face went carefully blank. "Right. Of course."
"Callum..."
"No, you're right. We barely know each other really. Just because we're living together and sleeping together doesn't mean you owe me honesty about what's clearly tearing you apart." He stepped back toward the door. "I'll leave you alone."
"That's not what I meant."
"Isn't it? Because that's what it sounds like. You want me there when it's convenient, when you need someone to hold you or make you feel better, but the second things get hard you shut me out completely."
"I just need space to deal with some things on my own."
"What things?"
"Things I'm not ready to talk about yet."
"When will you be ready? Because I'm here trying to build something real with you and you won't even tell me what's wrong when you're obviously falling apart."
The silence stretched between them, heavy and painful. Callum looked at her like he was waiting for her to say something that would fix this, and she looked back at him knowing she couldn't give him what he needed. Not yet. Maybe not ever.
Finally he shook his head. "Fine. Keep your secrets. But don't expect me to just stand here and watch you destroy yourself over whatever you're hiding."
He left. Didn't slam the door but closed it firmly enough that she felt it like a slap.
Lennox sat down on her bed, laptop forgotten. She'd almost told him. The words had been right there, so close to coming out. I'm Cipher. I'm investigating your company. Someone broke in here yesterday and tried to access my files and I think it was Victor but I can't prove it.
But what would happen if she actually said it? He'd be furious about the lies, devastated that she'd been investigating him and his family this whole time. He might not understand why she couldn't tell him sooner, might not forgive the deception even though she'd fallen in love with him somewhere along the way.
She pulled her knees to her chest, wrapped her arms around them. The sun was starting to come up outside her window, pale light filtering through the curtains.
She needed to finish this investigation. Needed to get proof of Victor's embezzlement before he figured out who she was and used it to destroy everything she'd built with Callum.
But she was running out of time, and she had no idea how much longer she could keep lying to the one person who actually mattered.