Sweet Revenge, Mr. CEO

Dangerous Curiosity

Aria spent the weekend memorizing blueprints.

Not architectural ones — digital ones. The internal structure of Cole Enterprises' server system, pulled from a contact she'd spent two years carefully cultivating inside the company's IT department. Marcus owed her a favor. Now they were even.

She sat cross-legged on her apartment floor surrounded by printed org charts, sticky notes, and three empty coffee cups, building the map of a company she intended to dismantle — quietly, legally, and completely.

The key was the archives.

Somewhere inside Cole Enterprises' private servers lived the original acquisition documents from seven years ago — the ones that proved the takeover of Bennett Bakery Supplies had been more than aggressive business. It had been fraud. Forged contracts. Falsified debt records that made her father's healthy little company look like a sinking ship worth salvaging for parts.

She just needed to find them.

Monday, she told herself, gathering the papers into a neat folder and sliding it under her mattress. One step at a time.

Monday arrived gray and cold, the kind of New York morning that smelled like rain and exhaust and ambition.

Aria was at her desk — a sleek station positioned just outside Ethan's office doors — by seven forty-five. Sandra had left a orientation packet, a security badge, and a single typed note:

Mr. Cole arrives at eight. He takes his coffee black. He does not like to be kept waiting, questioned unnecessarily, or surprised. Good luck.

Aria almost smiled at that last part.

She had the coffee ready at seven fifty-nine.

At exactly eight o'clock, the elevator opened and Ethan Cole walked out in a charcoal suit that probably cost more than her monthly rent. He moved through the office the way storms moved — everything rearranged itself around him without him seeming to notice or care.

He stopped at her desk. Looked at the coffee. Then at her.

"You read the note," he said.

"I'm a fast reader, Mr. Cole."

He picked up the cup, said nothing, and walked into his office.

Aria exhaled.

The first half of the day was a blur of scheduling, calls, and emails. Ethan was demanding in the way only truly brilliant people were — not loud, not cruel, just relentlessly precise. He expected things done before he finished asking for them. He marked up documents with a red pen like he was personally offended by inefficiency.

Aria kept up. Barely. But she kept up.

It was just past noon when her opportunity arrived.

Ethan was called into an emergency board meeting — something about a Tokyo acquisition falling through. He left without a word, taking half the senior staff with him. The floor thinned out. The open office settled into a focused quiet.

Aria waited exactly four minutes.

Then she stood, smoothed her blouse, picked up a tablet and a folder — always look like you're going somewhere — and walked calmly toward the secondary corridor where the executive server room was located. Marcus had told her it wasn't heavily monitored during lunch hours. Budget cuts had reduced the IT security rotation.

She badged through the first door easily — her clearance covered it.

The second door was the problem.

It required a six-digit code she didn't have. She stood in the narrow corridor, tablet pressed to her chest, thinking fast. She couldn't force it. Couldn't guess it. Not today — today was only reconnaissance.

Know the terrain before you move, her father used to say. He'd been talking about farming, back when they'd visit her uncle upstate. But it applied.

She turned back — and walked directly into a wall of charcoal suit.

Strong hands caught her arms before she stumbled. She gasped, looking up, and found Ethan Cole looking down at her with those dark, unreadable eyes.

The board meeting. It must have ended early.

"Miss Bennett." His voice was calm. Dangerously calm. His hands didn't move from her arms. "The server corridor is restricted to IT personnel and senior executives."

Aria's heart was a trapped thing behind her ribs. But her face — her face stayed soft and confused and perfectly innocent.

"I'm so sorry, Mr. Cole." She glanced around, as if only now realizing where she was. "I was looking for the print room — Sandra mentioned it was on this side of the floor and I must have taken a wrong turn. I have the quarterly reports you asked for and I didn't want to interrupt your meeting so I thought I'd just get them printed and ready—" She lifted the folder slightly as evidence.

A beat of silence.

He looked at the folder. Then at her face. Then — slowly — at the corridor behind her.

"The print room," he said, "is on the other side of the elevator bank."

"Oh." She let her cheeks color — not difficult, given how hard her heart was pounding. "I'm so embarrassed. First week." She gave a small, sheepish smile. "I'll figure out the layout soon, I promise."

Another silence. Longer this time.

Ethan Cole was not a man who accepted things easily. She could see it in the way he looked at her — not suspicious exactly, but assessing. Like he was turning her words over in his hands, checking for weak seams.

Then he stepped back and gestured toward the main floor.

"The print room is past reception. Third door on the left."

"Thank you." She dipped her head and walked past him at a perfectly unhurried pace.

She didn't breathe properly until she turned the corner.

She printed the reports. Placed them on his desk. Answered four more calls. Stayed two minutes late.

When she finally stepped into the elevator at six-fifteen, she let her shoulders drop for the first time all day.

She hadn't gotten into the server room.

But she'd learned something more valuable — the door code panel was a RetinaSafe 6000. She'd recognized the model from Marcus's notes. It didn't just need a code.

It needed a fingerprint.

Ethan Cole's fingerprint.

Aria stared at the lobby lights blurring past as the elevator descended and thought about the red pen he marked documents with. The coffee cup he set on her desk every morning. The dozen small objects a man touched every day without thinking.

She almost felt sorry for him.

Almost.