Chapter One: Ghost Protocol
730 Words
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POV: Lucien Kross
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She’s back.
I feel it before I see it. Before the breach alarms, before the error codes roll in like waves of war, before my assistant’s voice pierces through the glass walls of my office in a panic I don’t have time for.
No one hacks KrossTech.
No one but her.
> “Sir—your neural AI is glitching. Someone just accessed the mainframe remotely—Level 0 access clearance, but—”
> “No one has Level 0 but me,” I growl.
A beat of silence. My screens bleed red.
> YOU LEFT ME TO DIE. NOW I OWN YOU.
There it is. The ghost I’ve been dreading for half a decade. No warning. No shadow. Just her voice inside the tech I built with my own hands.
Nyx Kade.
She was a wildfire I thought I’d extinguished years ago. My creation. My obsession.
My wife.
But I buried her beneath smoke and fire during the Cairo op. She wasn’t supposed to survive.
Hell, I wasn’t supposed to survive what she did to me first.
And yet, here we are.
My jaw clenches as her custom encryption floods the system. Ghost Protocol—an untraceable neural weapon. A virus I designed... that I never released.
Except to one person.
I never gave her love. I gave her power. She took both and built herself into a weapon.
Now she’s back to use it on me.
> “Lucien,” my AI stutters. “The intruder has activated biometric triggers inside your penthouse.”
She’s in my home.
I shoot out of my chair. My voice like a blade. “Lock the building down. Level Five containment. Evacuate floors 90 to 100. Nobody moves without my command.”
Because if she’s here—
I want her cornered.
Alone.
Desperate.
Like she left me.
But there’s one thing Nyx Kade never was.
Desperate.
She was chaos in lace. A hacker in lipstick. A firebomb in my bed.
And now she’s come to finish what we started.
What she doesn't know?
I’ve been waiting.
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POV: Nyx Kade
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I don't knock when I come to destroy a man.
Especially not Lucien Kross.
His skyscraper is a tomb—steel, glass, secrets. The AI security bends beneath my code like it remembers me. It should. I wrote half of it while he kissed my shoulder in bed.
I move through his penthouse like a ghost, silk hair tucked into my tactical hood, boots silent. The air tastes like him—clove and violence.
> “Welcome back, Mrs. Kross,” the AI purrs.
He never deleted me.
I pause before the main terminal and drag a gloved hand across the crystal surface. The tech pulses under my fingers.
I’m inside him now—his system, his life. His lies.
Five years ago, Lucien chose power over me. He left me bleeding under a collapsing embassy while he walked into the night with a chip worth a billion dollars and a bullet where my heart should've been.
I should’ve died.
Instead, I rebuilt myself.
Stronger. Colder. Untouchable.
And yet...
My pulse kicks as the elevator dings behind me. I don’t turn.
> “Hello, husband.”
The air fractures. His presence hits like a storm—tailored black suit, shadow-cut jaw, obsidian eyes that used to make my knees weak.
Lucien.
He doesn't speak. Just looks at me like he’s swallowing fire. And I let him. I want him to burn.
> “You're dead,” he finally says, voice rough, controlled.
> “Almost. But not quite. You made one mistake when you walked away that night.”
I step closer, slow, measured, watching his jaw tighten.
> “You didn’t watch me die.”
We’re face to face now. Inches apart.
And for a moment—just one damn second—I see it.
The flicker.
He still wants me.
I want to slap him.
I want to kiss him.
I want to tear the truth out of his mouth and break it between my teeth.
> “What do you want, Nyx?”
> “I want your empire. Your secrets. Your pain.”
My fingers graze his chest.
> “And when I’m done?”
I lean in, lips almost brushing his.
> “I want to hear you beg.”
- Writer
