Wired to betray - between loyalty and you

CHAPTER 1

DERRICK'S POV

London in the morning smells like rain that hasn't fallen yet.

That particular shade of grey—heavy clouds hanging low over the skyline, the Thames somewhere in the distance doing whatever rivers do when nobody's watching—used to bother me when I first moved here.

Now...

I barely noticed it.

You stop noticing a lot of things when your bedroom overlooks Knightsbridge through floor-to-ceiling windows and your biggest decision before breakfast is which of your three watches deserves to leave the house with you.

I picked the Rolex.

Obviously.

My alarm went off at six.

I ignored it.

It rang again at six-thirty.

I rolled over.

By seven, I was awake but still horizontal, staring at the ceiling with the particular confidence of someone who had absolutely no intention of being on time. Not because nothing was scheduled, but because schedules, in my experience, were suggestions made by people who needed them.

I didn't.

Lecture started at eight-thirty.

My apartment sat nearly two hours away from Imperial College London on a good day.

A good day in London traffic, by the way, was mostly fictional—something people discussed the same way they discussed affordable rent or aliens.

Fortunately, I owned a black BMW 7 Series that made sitting in traffic considerably less offensive.

Being late had never really been a problem.

Not for me, anyway.

I showered without rushing.

Pulled on dark tailored trousers and a fitted black shirt—the kind of outfit that looked effortless despite requiring entirely too much effort.

As I fastened my watch, my father's voice echoed in my head.

"A Zang never walks into a room."

"A Zang arrives."

It had never sounded like advice.

It sounded like a rule.

I finally understood it when I was fifteen.

I'd watched him walk into a boardroom full of men twice his age. Conversations stopped before he'd spoken a single word. Every head turned. Every back straightened.

Power wasn't something my father demanded.

It simply followed him.

I'd been trying to imitate it ever since.

Whether I'd succeeded...

That depended on who you asked.

I grabbed an espresso from the machine.

Two shots.

No sugar.

Sweetness had never suited me, and I refused to pretend otherwise.

The London skyline stretched beyond the glass, dull beneath another blanket of clouds.

It looked exhausted.

Strangely...

So did I.

I left the apartment at exactly eight.

Which meant I was already late.

The Sherfield Building at Imperial College always looked vaguely disappointed in everyone walking through it.

Glass. Concrete. Academic judgment in architectural form.

The corridors smelled of coffee and ambition, and somewhere nearby, someone was almost certainly having a breakdown over coursework.

I checked my watch as I stepped into the lobby.

10:47 a.m.

Two hours seventeen minutes late.

Not my worst.

Last Tuesday had been two hours twenty-three.

I pushed open the lecture theatre doors.

The old hinges betrayed me immediately.

Every head turned.

Professor Gerald Whitmore stood at the front of the room, a marker suspended halfway across a whiteboard covered in system architecture diagrams. Process flows. Distributed network models. Annotations in red and blue that probably made sense to everyone except me.

He looked at me.

Then at the clock.

Then back at me.

The lecture hall fell silent.

Not the awkward kind.

The expectant kind.

The sort where two hundred students were trying very hard not to laugh before the show had even started.

"Mr. Zang."

His voice was dry enough to sand wood.

"How thoughtful of you to join us."

A ripple of laughter spread through the room.

I slipped one hand into my pocket and offered him my most apologetic smile.

"My sincerest apologies, Professor."

He adjusted his glasses.

"I'd believe that if this wasn't the fourth apology you've offered me this month."

More laughter.

Fair enough.

"London traffic," I said.

"Of course."

"It was particularly determined today."

"I imagine your alarm clock shares some of the responsibility."

Even I smiled at that.

Whitmore placed the marker on the desk and folded his arms.

"Tell me, Mr. Zang."

"What time does this lecture begin?"

"Eight-thirty."

"And what time is it now?"

I glanced at my Rolex.

"Ten forty-seven."

"So..."

He gestured toward me.

"What conclusion should we draw?"

I pretended to think.

"...That London has failed us both?"

The room erupted.

Whitmore pinched the bridge of his nose.

"You confuse confidence with charm."

"I've been told I possess both."

"I sincerely question the judgment of those people."

Another wave of laughter rolled through the lecture theatre.

I bowed my head slightly.

"I'll inform my mother."

"My condolences to her."

That one nearly got me.

Nearly.

Whitmore's amusement disappeared as quickly as it had come.

"Would you care to explain why you continue enrolling in my lectures if punctuality appears to offend you personally?"

"Education builds character."

"So does military school."

"I considered it."

"No, you didn't."

"...You're right."

"I know."

More laughter.

I started down the steps toward my usual seat in the third row.

Close enough to look engaged.

Far enough to disappear if necessary.

"You know, Derrick."

I stopped.

He rarely called me by my first name.

"If your father applied the same standards to ZangCore that you apply to my lectures..."

He paused just long enough.

"...I doubt the company would've survived its first year."

The laughter faded.

I looked at him, raising one eyebrow—the same way my father did whenever someone said something that was technically correct but fundamentally beside the point.

"My father," I replied calmly, "would probably buy the university before letting that happen."

A few students chuckled.

Whitmore didn't.

"I'm sure he could."

His eyes held mine.

"But fortunately for me..."

He tapped the lectern once.

"...this classroom isn't for sale."

Silence.

For the first time that morning...

I had nothing clever to say.

Interesting.

Whitmore gave a small nod toward my seat.

"Now sit down, Mr. Zang."

Without another word, I slid into my seat.

Beside me, Tobias leaned over.

"I think he finally won one."

I smiled into my coffee.

"...Maybe."

Whitmore resumed the lecture as though nothing had happened, explaining distributed systems, server redundancy, and enterprise-level infrastructure. Normally, I would've tuned out after the first five minutes.

Then he switched to a case study.

A European defence technology corporation.

The architecture on the screen looked...

Familiar.

Painfully familiar.

The interconnected server clusters.

The security protocols.

Even the colour coding.

I'd seen something almost identical before.

I was seventeen.

I'd wandered into my father's office looking for a phone charger.

Four men I'd never met stopped talking the moment I opened the door.

One quietly closed a folder.

Another shut his laptop.

My father looked at me and smiled.

Not warmly.

Politely.

"Derrick."

His voice had been calm.

"Wrong room."

That was all.

No explanation.

No anger.

Just enough to make it clear I wasn't supposed to be there.

I'd apologised and left.

At the time...

It hadn't seemed strange.

Now, staring at the slide on Whitmore's projector...

I wasn't so sure.

Forty minutes later, Whitmore dismissed us.

I was the first one moving.

The scrape of my chair echoed through the lecture theatre, earning a glare from the row ahead that I made absolutely no effort to acknowledge.

I slung my bag over one shoulder, dropped my empty coffee cup neatly into the bin by the exit, and stepped into the corridor.

The hallway outside Sherfield was alive.

Students drifted in every direction, conversations blending into one constant hum. Coffee cups. Laptop bags. Someone sprinting because they were late. Someone else arguing over the phone.

Imperial had a way of making brilliance look permanently exhausted.

"Seventeen minutes late and he still managed to argue with Whitmore."

"He isn't confident."

A second voice laughed.

"He's just rich."

I smiled to myself.

People loved having opinions about me.

Most of them had never spoken to me.

I had barely taken three steps before someone walked straight into me.

Or maybe...

I walked into her.

The collision was solid enough to knock a notebook from her hands.

It slapped against the polished floor.

She stumbled backwards.

Without thinking, I caught her by the wrist before she lost her balance.

For one suspended heartbeat...

Neither of us moved.

She looked up.

Dark eyes.

Sharp enough to cut glass.

A loose strand of dark hair had fallen across her face, but she brushed it behind her ear without breaking eye contact.

She wasn't embarrassed.

She was assessing me.

Interesting.

I released her immediately.

She took one measured step back.

Not frightened.

Just creating space.

Deliberate.

Calculated.

I glanced at the notebook lying between us before looking back at her.

"Watch where you're going."

One perfectly shaped eyebrow lifted.

"Excuse me?"

Her voice was calm.

Too calm.

"You walked into me."

"No."

She folded her arms.

"You came charging out of that lecture theatre like you owned the corridor."

"I own quite a lot of things."

I smiled.

"Corridors aren't currently on the list, but I could certainly look into expanding."

She stared at me for a long moment.

Not impressed.

Not intimidated.

Simply deciding whether I was worth another second of her time.

"I'll help you out," she said.

"My vote is insufferable."

A laugh escaped before I could stop it.

She looked mildly surprised.

Truth be told...

So was I.

She bent to retrieve her notebook.

I picked it up first.

Our fingers brushed as I handed it over.

"Mine."

There wasn't even a hint of gratitude in her voice.

I liked that more than I should have.

I tilted my head.

"So..."

"Who are you?"

She slipped the notebook beneath her arm.

"Why?"

"So I know who nearly murdered me in broad daylight."

The corner of her mouth twitched.

Barely.

"You bruise easily?"

"No."

"Then you'll survive."

There it was again.

That almost-smile.

Gone before I could decide whether I'd imagined it.

"I'm Derrick."

"I didn't ask."

"I know."

Students squeezed around us, clearly irritated that we'd chosen the middle of the corridor to hold whatever this was.

Neither of us moved.

"So..."

I tried again.

"You have a name?"

She studied me for another second before answering.

"Zara."

Just Zara.

No surname.

No explanation.

"Derrick."

I offered my hand.

"Derrick Zang."

She looked at it.

Didn't shake it.

Instead, she looked back at me.

"Zang Thomas's son."

Not a question.

A statement.

I slowly lowered my hand.

"The one and only."

Something flickered across her face.

Recognition.

Not admiration.

Recognition.

Followed by something else.

Something carefully hidden before I could identify it.

"Hm."

That was it.

Just...

Hm.

She stepped around me.

"That's all?" I called after her.

"Most people have more to say."

She stopped.

Only for a moment.

Without turning around, she said,

"I'm not most people."

Then she disappeared into the crowd.

I remained where I was.

Students brushed past my shoulders.

Someone muttered an apology after bumping into my bag.

I barely noticed.

Zara.

No surname.

No department.

No explanation.

Just one strange look when she heard my father's name.

It wasn't curiosity.

It wasn't admiration.

If anything...

It looked like caution.

I should've forgotten about her.

Instead...

I found myself scanning the crowd, hoping to catch one last glimpse before she disappeared completely.

For the first time in years...

Someone had walked away from Derrick Zang without looking back.

Without asking for anything.

Without being impressed.

And somehow...

I wanted to see her again.