“You… how dare you?! Rachel, that’s ten years of our work!”
“Our work?” I sneered.
“The moment you let her parade around with my research to claim that award, the word ‘our’ ceased to exist. Ethan Blake, you were the one who taught me that once something gets dirty, you throw it away.”
Perhaps hearing Ethan’s voice, Lily let out another sharp, pitiful cry:
“Brother… my face… it hurts… kill her…”
Ethan’s voice trembled with panic and heartbreak.
“Lily! Don’t be afraid, I’m coming right now!”
“Rachel, if you want to punish someone, punish me. Lily is innocent—she doesn’t deserve your cruelty!”
“What do I want?”
I glanced at the computer screen as the prompt [Transmission Complete] flashed. My lips curved into a cold smile.
“I want you to watch with your own eyes how the empire you’re so proud of crumbles, just like her so-called perfect future—”
I paused, then pronounced each word with chilling clarity:
“Completely shattered. Nothing left.”
With that, I hung up, cutting off his enraged screams.
Leaning back in my chair, I couldn’t stop the echo of his words in my mind: ten years of work.
Ten years.
I remembered when he had just started his company, crammed into a tiny office, the two of us sharing one cup of instant noodles. His eyes sparkled as he told me:
“Rachel, we’re going to change the world.”
As the company grew, we made countless enemies.
To win that critical patent, I used every trick, pushing our rival to the edge until its leader leapt to his death.
Ethan held me tight afterward:
“Don’t be afraid, Rachel. We’re partners in crime. For life, we’re bound together.”
On the eve of the Aegis System’s debut, we faced our most vicious hacker attack. The servers were on the verge of collapse.
I locked myself in the server room for seventy-two hours, fighting back wave after wave of intrusions until exhaustion knocked me out in his arms.
He kept vigil all night, red-eyed, whispering:
“Rachel, you’re my armor, and my weakness. Without you, what would I do?”
Those bloody, hidden battles—he once called them our shared medals, proof of our inseparable bond.
And yet now, he claimed Lily was pure and clean, that her future shouldn’t be stained by blood like mine.
How laughable.
He fell in love with the very purity he had stripped away from himself, forgetting who bore all the shadows so he could bask in the light.