Chapter Six- The leak
690 Words
Five months left.
November rolled in quiet and cold: crisp air, early sunsets, leaves crunching underfoot like broken promises. Elena and Alex had fallen into a rhythm that felt too easy, too real.
Mornings: black coffee in separate kitchens, texts that said nothing important but everything at once.
Nights: tangled sheets, whispered secrets, the kind of quiet where you forget the world exists outside the bedroom.
They still called it casual.
They were still lying.
It started with a single email.
Elena was at her desk by 7:15 on a Wednesday, steam curling from her mug, eyes on the quarterly projections. Her inbox chimed.
Subject: You should see this before it hits the press.
No sender name. Just a file.
She opened it.
Photos.
Blurry edges, but sharp where it counted.
Her back against the hotel mirror in Boston last week, legs around his waist, head thrown back.
Them in the back of the town car, her on top, head thrown back.
Twelve pictures total.
One line underneath:
$10 million wired by Monday.
Or these hit every inbox from here to Tokyo.
Her stomach dropped through the floor.
She called Alex. He was upstairs in two minutes, tie half knotted, face already thunder.
He looked at the screen. Didn’t speak for ten seconds.
Then: “Who?”
“Tracing it now.”
He paced once, stopped. “We’re finding this bastard tonight.”
By nine that night they had a name.
Preston Hale.
Fired junior IT guy from two years ago. Caught selling old company phones on the side. Thought he’d been forgotten.
He hadn’t.
He still had a master keycard he never returned.
He still had admin rights he never lost.
He’d been watching the whole time.
Address: a walk-up in Bushwick.
They went together. No driver. No security. Just Alex’s black Range Rover cutting through the rain.
Preston opened the door in sweatpants and cereal stains, eyes going wide when he saw who was on the other side.
Alex didn’t waste words. He grabbed Preston by the throat, shoved him inside, and kicked the door shut behind them.
“Delete everything,” Alex said, voice deadly quiet.
“I…I already scheduled the send..”
Alex slammed him against the wall hard enough to rattle the cheap shelves.
Elena stepped forward, calm as ice. “Unschedule it.”
Preston’s hands shook so bad he could barely type the passwords. Elena took the laptop, wiped drives, emptied clouds, killed every auto send. Ten minutes later there was nothing left.
She looked up. “Gone.”
Alex still had Preston pinned.
“Please,” Preston rasped. “I needed the money. Student loans”
“You needed to learn boundaries,” Elena said.
She leaned in close. “You don’t get to watch me come. You don’t get to watch anyone come. Ever again.”
Alex let go. Preston slid to the floor coughing.
They walked out without another word.
In the car, rain hammering the roof, Elena finally spoke.
“He saw everything.”
“I know.”
“Months.”
“I know.”
She stared out the window. “This only happened because we got careless.”
He pulled over on a side street, engine idling. Turned to her.
“I don’t regret it,” he said. “Any of it.”
She looked at him: rain streaked window behind him, streetlight catching the gray in his eyes.
“Me neither,” she whispered.
He leaned in. Kissed her slow, hands framing her face like she might break.
They drove to his place that night. No rush. No fire. Just gentle touches, quiet gasps, bodies moving like they’d known each other forever.
After, she curled against him, skin warm, heart steady.
“Five months,” she said into the dark.
His arm tightened around her. “Plenty of time.”
But the twist came the next morning.
Another email. Same burner style.
More photos. Newer ones.
From last night. In his apartment.
Someone else was watching.
And this time, the demand was $20 million.
Elena stared at her phone, coffee forgotten.
It wasn’t over.
It was just beginning.
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