HIS COSTLY MISTAKE

Chapter four

The room fell into a heavy silence after Victoria Vance’s call ended. Even though the line was dead, her cruel voice seemed to linger in the air.

“It’ll be your little brother Mateo’s exact location, sent to the people looking for him.”

For a moment, Izzy couldn’t breathe. Fear gripped her as her thoughts went straight to Mateo. He was asleep at his care facility, completely unaware that he had become part of a dangerous corporate war. The confidence she had held onto all night, the fearless PR strategist who refused to back down from anyone, fell away in an instant.

Panic rushed through her.

“No,” Izzy whispered, her voice breaking. A wave of fear hit her so hard that her hands began to shake. She gripped the edge of her laptop to steady herself.

“No… no, no. I have to go. I have to get to him. Right now.”

Izzy snapped her laptop shut. Her only thought was to get to Mateo. She wanted to run out of the boardroom, find a way past the locked doors, and reach him before anyone else did. She couldn’t bear the thought of her brother suffering because of her again.

“Isabella, stop!” Alexander’s voice rang through the room, but she was too consumed by fear to listen.

She reached for her briefcase, but before she could take a step, Alexander moved in front of her, blocking her way. His tall frame filled the space between her and the door. Before she could slip past him, he gently but firmly caught both of her wrists and held her hands against the closed laptop.

“Let me go, Alexander!” Izzy cried, struggling to pull free. Fear and desperation filled her eyes. Tears finally spilled down her cheeks, leaving streaks in her makeup.

“You don’t understand!” she shouted. “They know where he is! If they hurt him… if they go after him because of your company’s secrets, I’ll never forgive you. Let me go!”

“Isabella, look at me!” Alexander shouted.

The force in Alexander’s voice caught her off guard. It was nothing like his usual calm, distant tone. She stopped fighting, breathing hard as she slowly raised her eyes to meet his.

In the dim blue light from the monitor, the cold, almighty CEO was gone. Alexander’s jaw was tight, and his face showed something Izzy had never seen before, desperation. His grey eyes were no longer calm or calculating. They burned with the same determination to protect Mateo that she felt.

I’m not letting you run out of this building and walk straight into a trap, Isabella,” Alexander said, his voice low and serious. His grip on her wrists loosened, his hands becoming gentler as he felt her shaking.

“Listen to me. I swear on my life, nothing is going to happen to Mateo. I’m going to fix this. Right now

Without taking his eyes off Izzy, Alexander turned to Marcus.

“Marcus. Use the secure line. Contact my private security team. I want four elite operators sent to Mateo’s care facility within three minutes. They need to secure his area immediately. No one enters, no one leaves. If anyone connected to the Vance network comes near that building, stop them. Do you understand?”

“On it,” Marcus gasped, quickly typing into his tablet before hurrying out of the boardroom to contact the security team

The heavy doors closed behind him, leaving Izzy and Alexander alone in the dim blue light of the room.

Izzy looked up at him, her heart still racing, but the overwhelming fear was slowly fading. In its place was shock.

She had spent her entire career believing that powerful men like Alexander only cared about money, companies, and reputation. But here he was, using his own resources, lowering his defenses, and promising to protect her brother at any cost.

For the first time in a year, Izzy realized she didn’t have to face everything alone.

“Three minutes,” Izzy whispered, staring up at him. Her fear was returning. “Victoria gave us five minutes to drop the defenses. Alexander… we have less than four minutes now.”

“Then we fight back,” Alexander said quietly.

He slowly released her wrists but stayed close. His steady presence helped ease the chaos around them.

“Sit down, Isabella,” he said. “I want you to show me why you’re the best PR strategist in this city.”

The fear in Izzy’s eyes was replaced by determination. She wiped away her tears, straightened her posture, and opened her laptop again. The screen came alive, lighting their faces as Alexander sat down beside her.

Their shoulders touched as they sat close together. Izzy could feel the steady movement of his breathing. The tension between them was so strong it felt impossible to ignore.

“We’re not backing down,” Izzy said, her voice turning cold and confident as she typed. “If we surrender, Victoria gets exactly what she wants and your files will still go public. We can use the master encryption keys Marcus gave us to slow down the Vance server.”

“I’ll handle the firewall backend,” Alexander said, placing his hand over hers as he guided her through his private system. The touch caught her off guard, but she pushed the distraction away and focused on the screen.

“I can overload their receiver nodes with a controlled data loop. It’ll slow down their scraping bots.”

“Good. While you slow down their system, I’m launching the counterattack,” Izzy said, typing rapidly. “I’m sending a legal warning to the editors of the top three tech news outlets in New York. We’re not just saying the leak is fake anymore—we’re making them believe the files contain protected government-level encryption. If they publish anything from your drive, they’ll risk immediate legal action and an investigation.”

Alexander let out a quiet laugh, admiration flickering in his eyes as he watched her type.

“A forged federal injunction? That’s a risky game, Ms. Mendoza. You could lose your entire career over that.”

“My license doesn’t matter right now, Mr. Ravenwood. My family does,” Izzy snapped. She turned to face him, their faces only inches apart.

“So are you helping me with this plan, or not?”

“I guess I don’t have a choice,” Alexander whispered, his eyes locked with hers. “If this is what it takes to protect your family and save my company, then I’m standing beside you.”

For the next two minutes, the boardroom became a silent battlefield. They worked together without needing to speak, their different strengths combining perfectly. Alexander handled the security systems, clearing the way for Izzy to launch her media strategy and create a legal distraction.

00:00:15

“The tech journals are backing down,” Izzy whispered, her eyes scanning the screen as the countdown on Marcus’s monitor reached its final seconds. “They’re pulling the stories. The legal threat worked.”

00:00:08

“The bandwidth loop is holding,” Alexander said, his voice low as he leaned closer. “The local server is struggling to process the code.”

00:00:03

00:00:02

00:00:01

At the final second, their fingers struck the master enter key together.

The monitor on the wall flashed bright green. The file upload stopped. The encryption process froze. The global leak had been stopped.

Silence filled the boardroom once again. The immediate threat was gone, but the tension remained. Both of them stood there, breathing heavily as the rush of adrenaline slowly disappeared.

Izzy finally let out the breath she had been holding. Her shoulders dropped as relief washed over her. “We did it,” she whispered, looking at Alexander.

But when Izzy turned, she realized how close they were. Alexander hadn’t moved. He was looking down at her, his grey eyes filled with an intensity that had nothing to do with the crisis they had just survived.

The closeness between them made her heart race. In the quiet blue glow of the room, the professional distance they had tried to maintain began to disappear.

Alexander’s eyes drifted to her lips. Slowly, he raised a hand and gently brushed his fingers along her jaw. The touch sent a shiver through her, making her breath catch. She looked up at him, drawn closer without even realizing it. In the quiet room, it felt as though they were only a heartbeat away from kissing.

Just as his lips were about to touch hers, the overhead lights suddenly flickered back on, flooding the room with bright light and breaking the moment.

The mahogany doors slammed open, and Marcus stumbled inside, looking terrified. A deafening security alarm erupted from his tablet, filling the room with noise

“Alexander, we’ve got a critical breach!” Marcus yelled over the alarm. “The security team reached Mateo’s facility… but they were too late. Someone was already inside