Tuesday, 9:00 AM. The Bunker.
The air in the underground auto shop was thick with the smell of stale coffee and the low, constant hum of the air-gapped servers. Nia was asleep in a folding chair, her head resting on a stack of server manuals, her glasses pushed up into her hair. She had been awake for thirty-six hours straight, building the digital ghost-trail that had saved me from Evelyn Cross’s initial interrogation.
I didn’t wake her. I walked over to the secondary terminal, the one connected to the outside world, and pulled up the dossier I had compiled on the Director of Enforcement.
Evelyn Cross was a ghost in her own right.
Her digital footprint was practically non-existent. No social media, no public scandals, no messy divorces. She lived in a modest apartment in D.C., drove a five-year-old sedan, and spent her vacations hiking in remote national parks where there was no cell service. Her bank accounts were boringly normal. She didn’t gamble, she didn’t have expensive hobbies, and she didn’t owe anyone money.
Willpower: 98. Corruption: 0.
The System’s stats weren’t an exaggeration. She was a true believer in the law. She was the kind of person who would arrest her own mother if she caught her jaywalking.
I leaned back in my chair, rubbing my temples.
You can’t blackmail someone who has no secrets. You can’t bribe someone who doesn’t care about money. And you can’t intimidate someone who has the full weight of the federal government standing behind her.
"You’re staring at her file like it’s going to magically reveal a weakness," a voice said from the shadows.
I turned. Darius was leaning against the concrete wall near the entrance, a massive cup of coffee in his hand. He had been pulling perimeter security all night, making sure the SEC hadn’t followed me to the bunker.
"She doesn’t have one," I said, turning back to the screen. "I’ve run her through every public database. I even had Nia run a passive query through Oracle before she went to sleep. Nothing. Evelyn Cross is a saint."
Darius walked over, his heavy boots thudding against the concrete. He looked at the photo of Evelyn on the screen—a stern, unsmiling headshot from her official SEC profile.
"Nobody is a saint, Hart," Darius said, taking a sip of his coffee. "Everyone has a pressure point. If it’s not money, and it’s not secrets, then it’s something else. What does she care about?"
"Her job," I said. "The law. Putting white-collar criminals in prison."
"Then that’s her weakness," Darius said simply.
I looked up at him, frowning. "Her dedication to her job is her weakness?"
"If you care about something that much, you’ll do anything to protect it," Darius explained, his voice a low rumble. "When I was playing ball, the guys who cared the most about winning were the easiest to bait into a penalty. They’d get so focused on the objective, they’d lose sight of the rules. If she wants to catch you that badly, she might be willing to bend her own rules to do it."
I stared at Darius. It was a brilliant, terrifyingly simple insight.
Evelyn Cross was a hunter. She was obsessed with catching the prey. If I couldn’t corrupt her with money or fear, maybe I could corrupt her with the hunt itself. I needed to give her a trail of breadcrumbs so tantalizing, so close to the truth, that she would step out of her jurisdiction to follow it.
I needed to make her break the law to catch me.
"You’re a genius, Darius," I said, a slow smile spreading across my face.
"I know," he grunted. "That’s why you pay me."
I turned back to the terminal and woke Nia up with a gentle shake of her shoulder. She snorted, blinking sleepily, and reached for her glasses.
"What time is it?" she mumbled.
"Time to go on the offensive," I said. "I need you to build a honeypot."
Nia rubbed her eyes, instantly alert. "A honeypot? For the SEC? Jake, if they trace a trap back to us—"
"They won’t," I said. "Because we’re not going to trap them. We’re going to give them exactly what they want. I need you to create a dummy server. Make it look like an offshore Vanguard holding account. Fill it with encrypted, highly suspicious financial data. Make it look like the exact place Victoria and I would hide the Aegis Mining profits."
"Okay," Nia said slowly, her fingers hovering over the keyboard. "I can do that. But Evelyn Cross isn’t stupid. She’ll subpoena the server legally. She’ll go through the courts."
"Not if the server is located in a non-extradition country," I said, my mind racing as the plan formed. "Put the IP address in a jurisdiction that explicitly ignores SEC subpoenas. Make it legally untouchable."
Nia frowned. "If it’s legally untouchable, she can’t get the data."
"Exactly," I said, my smile widening. "She’ll know the evidence she needs to put me in prison is sitting right there, on that server, and she won’t be able to touch it legally. She’ll have to make a choice. Walk away from the biggest case of her career... or hack the server illegally."
Nia stared at me, the realization dawning on her. "You want to bait the Director of Enforcement into committing a federal cybercrime."
"If she hacks the server," I said softly, "she breaks the law. Her Corruption stat goes from zero to one. And once she crosses that line, she’s mine."
Wednesday, 3:00 PM. Vanguard Holdings, 50th Floor.
The atmosphere in the executive suite was suffocating. Evelyn Cross and her team had been occupying Conference Room B for three days, and their presence was acting like a slow-acting poison on the company’s morale. Victoria was furious, pacing her office like a caged tiger, snapping at her assistants and canceling meetings.
I walked into the war room carrying a stack of physical files—quarterly earnings reports that Evelyn had requested that morning.
Evelyn was standing by the window, looking out at the city. She looked tired. The pristine, untouchable aura she had arrived with was beginning to fray around the edges. She had spent seventy-two hours tearing through Vanguard’s digital archives, and she had found absolutely nothing. Nia’s ghost-trail was holding up perfectly.
"Director Cross," I said, dropping the heavy files onto the conference table with a loud thud. "The Q3 earnings reports you requested. Fully unredacted."
Evelyn turned away from the window. She looked at the files, then at me. Her dark eyes were sharp, analytical, and deeply frustrated.
"Thank you, Mr. Hart," she said, her voice tight. She walked over to the table and rested her hands on the back of a leather chair. "You know, I’ve been doing this job for a long time. I’ve investigated hedge funds, tech conglomerates, and pharmaceutical giants. And in every single case, no matter how smart the criminals thought they were, they always left a mistake. A careless email. A misfiled invoice. A panicked text message."
She leaned forward, her gaze boring into mine.



VERIFYCAPTCHA_LABEL
Comments
The readers' comments on the novel: My Milf Conqueror System