The Boy I Swore to Hate

Chapter 4 — The Ghost Protocol

The cool dawn air rushed into the sub-level laboratory, clearing out the lingering scent of ozone and heated circuits, but it did nothing to cool the simmering friction between Bia and Enzo.

Bia tossed her toolkit onto the steel workbench with a sharp clang, her amber eyes narrowing as she glared at the open elevator doors. "Your uncle’s network relay didn't just bounce through a shell corporation overseas. I caught a secondary ping tracking back to a domestic subsidiary owned directly by the Vasconcelos Holdings parent trust."

Enzo walked over, leaning his weight against the edge of the console, his grey-blue eyes dark and calculating. The arrogant indifference he usually wore like a shield had been completely burned away, leaving behind a cold, razor-sharp focus. "Which means he’s not just trying to cover up an institutional audit. He’s liquidating the academy’s subsidiary accounts to fund the municipal strip acquisition we found in the tax deeds last week."

"He’s embezzling from the scholarship fund to finance his own private real estate empire," Bia said, the realization hitting her with the force of a physical blow. Her hands curled into tight fists at her sides. "And he used your name to sign off on the initial wire transfers so he’d have a built-in scapegoat if federal investigators ever came knocking."

Enzo didn't flinch. Instead, a slow, terrifying smile touched the corners of his lips—a look of pure, unadulterated predator instinct. "He wanted a scapegoat. He’s going to get a federal indictment instead."

Before Bia could reply, the terminal screen flickered back to life, flashing an automated alert sequence. A new file had just been injected directly into their local directory—not from an external hack, but from an internal administrative node located on the executive floor.

Bia stepped closer to the monitor, her breath catching in her throat. "Look at the metadata. This isn't a trap; it’s an unencrypted data dump."

Enzo crowded in beside her, his shoulder pressing firmly against hers as he scanned the scrolling lines of text. "It’s not just a data dump," he murmured, his voice dropping an octave. "It’s my uncle’s master ledger. Every offshore account, every forged signature, every corrupted municipal contract—it’s all right here."

"Who sent it?" Bia demanded, her fingers flying across the keyboard to trace the packet's origin IP. "Nobody inside the executive wing has clearance to pull this level of financial data except—"

She stopped dead. The tracking script resolved the internal IP address straight to the dean’s private administrative terminal.

"Lorena," Bia whispered, the name slipping out in a breathless mixture of shock and disbelief.

Enzo straightened up, his brow furrowing as he processed the revelation. "Your workshop partner? The one who was caught planting the fake audit records in our archive folder?"

"She didn't do it because she wanted to betray us," Bia said, pieces of the puzzle suddenly snapping together with blinding clarity. "She did it because your uncle’s corporate syndicate had her family’s business backed into the exact same corner. She was acting as a double agent inside their network the entire time."

The sudden weight of the betrayal shifted into something entirely different: a tactical opening. Lorena hadn't just been compromised; she had spent the last week quietly infiltrating the executive wing from the inside, waiting for the exact moment their digital bypass punched a hole in the firewall so she could slip the master ledger through.

Enzo reached out, his hand sliding over Bia’s shoulder, his fingers gripping the fabric of her sweater with a grounding, undeniable warmth. "She gave us the weapon. Now we have to use it."

"If we take this ledger straight to the board, your uncle will just use his legal team to suppress the files before morning classes even start," Bia pointed out, her mind racing as she calculated every possible variable. "We need to route these files directly to the federal securities commission while simultaneously locking down the main campus server room so they can't execute a remote wipe."

"Which means," Enzo finished smoothly, a fierce, answering fire igniting deep within his grey-blue eyes, "we have to break into the executive wing ourselves."

The tension in the room spiked instantly, transforming from intellectual discovery into raw, physical adrenaline. Breaking into the restricted sub-level was one thing; infiltrating the executive sanctum where Marcus Vasconcelos and his inner circle operated was an act of open warfare.

Bia turned to face him, stepping right up into his space until she could feel the heat radiating off his chest. Her amber eyes locked onto his with absolute, unyielding defiance. "It’s a suicide mission, Vasconcelos. If we get caught, there won't be a disciplinary hearing. They'll bury us both so deep the state won't find the paperwork."

Enzo reached down, his fingers gently brushing a stray lock of dark hair away from her face, his touch shockingly tender amidst the chaos. "Then it's a good thing," he murmured, his voice low and raw, "that I don't plan on getting caught."

He didn't pull away, and neither did she. The air between them grew thick, charged with a volatile mixture of fear, adrenaline, and an undeniable, scorching magnetism that had been building since the moment they collided in the corridor. Every wall they had built, every defense they carried, felt paper-thin against the pull drawing them together.

Bia’s breath hitched, her gaze dropping for a fraction of a second to his lips before flashing back up to his eyes. "Vasconcelos..." she warned, though her voice lacked any real bite.

"Focus, Medeiros," Enzo whispered, a dark, wicked smirk tugging at his mouth, though his eyes burned with fierce intensity. "We have an empire to burn down."

She let out a sharp, breathless laugh, stepping back just enough to break the spell before it consumed them both. She grabbed her tactical bag, zipping it shut with a decisive snap.

"Let's go," Bia said, her voice steady and lethal. "Time to crash the system."