Chapter 1

The flickering television screen in the dingy motel room was the only light, casting long, dancing shadows across the peeling wallpaper.

On the screen, Ethan Vance, my former fiancé, smiled his perfect, camera-ready smile. He stood on a brightly lit stage, the logo of his company, 'EvolveAI' , blazing behind him.

"Our proprietary algorithm, 'Prometheus,' is not just software," he said, his voice smooth and confident, "it is the future. And today, we invite you to be a part of that future."

Reporters were shouting questions, their camera flashes like a swarm of angry fireflies. He was the king of Silicon Valley, the brilliant mind who had created the world' s most advanced artificial intelligence.

My world. My code. My future. He had stolen it all.

I remembered the day he left. He had stood in the doorway of our sunny apartment, the one I had paid for, and looked at me with cold, empty eyes. The brilliant code I had spent three years of my life writing was on a hard drive in his bag.

"It' s better this way, Scarlett," he had said, not a trace of warmth in his voice. "I' m destined for great things. You were always just... holding me back."

He didn' t just take the code. He took my savings, our shared accounts, and my reputation. He systematically contacted every major tech firm, every venture capitalist, every headhunter, and told them I was unstable, unreliable, a fraud. He blacklisted me from the world I had helped build.

And Bethany Cole, my best friend, had stood right beside him, her arm linked through his. She looked at me with a face full of fake pity.

"We' re so sorry, Scar," she' d said, though her eyes were shining with triumph. "We just... fell in love. We couldn' t help it."

They left me with nothing. The eviction notice came a week later. I sold my car, my furniture, anything of value, just to survive. I drifted from one dead-end coding gig to another, always working under pseudonyms, hiding my real name, which Ethan had turned to poison.

I was a ghost in the machine, a nameless expert cleaning up security flaws for companies that would have never hired Scarlett Hayes.

The pain of that betrayal was a physical thing. It was a constant, heavy weight in my chest. For years, it was a suffocating darkness, a deep pit I couldn't climb out of. It felt like being trapped, surrounded by enemies I couldn't see, their whispers of my failure and incompetence echoing in the dark. It was the death of the naive, trusting woman I used to be.

As I watched Ethan on that TV, basking in the glory of my work, a different feeling began to burn through the despair. It was a cold, sharp-edged rage.

In that moment, lying in that cheap motel room, I made a vow. It was a curse whispered into the stale air. He would not get away with it. I would not let him build his empire on my ruins. I would get justice. I would take back what was mine.

That vow was my rebirth. The despair was gone, replaced by a singular, burning purpose.

My chance came two weeks later. While doing a routine security audit for a financial firm, I stumbled upon a vulnerability. It was in the very network that was handling Ethan' s massive IPO. And through that vulnerability, I saw a familiar digital signature deep inside EvolveAI' s servers. It was a backdoor I had built into the original framework of 'Prometheus' , a failsafe that only I knew existed.

He had been arrogant. He had been so sure he had erased me that he never bothered to look for the ghost I' d left behind.

He was on the verge of the biggest IPO in tech history. He was about to become a billionaire.

And I had the key to his kingdom.

I sat back, a slow smile spreading across my face. The game wasn't over. It had just begun. I wasn't going to be a victim anymore. I was going to be the storm he never saw coming. I would let him climb as high as he could, right to the very peak of his triumph.

And then, I would burn it all to the ground.

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