Sentenced to Marriage by MadlainQ

Busting the intruders I knew | should have spent that night being proud of myself, but I had spent it crying. | wanted to be loved, and | wanted to fight for this love, but not at the price of losing myself. | was afraid that one day | would wake up bitter and tired of waiting for something that would never happen. Perhaps | was the one being selfish; | wanted him to have feelings forjust because | was filled with feelings for him, but I grew up learning that | had the right to be loved without needing to beg for it. Right now, I felt as if | was on my knees, begging him, waiting like a dog for a bone. It was pathetic.

| told Aren that | would wait until after Lan Jing’s birthday, but | couldn't understand why that event had to determine our relationship. Was he going to miraculously open his heart forthen? Would a witch cast a spell upon him, and he would realize that he lovedall along? | couldn't deny that my heart fluttered every t| saw him, that every the touchedI felt shivers, that | had my eyes only for him. It didn’t matter if he gavenothing but physical pleasure while | was ready to give him my all.

| felt as if | had to minimize our contact for a while. | crawled out of bed at six o'clock, tiptoed by his bedroom door, and sneaked out to work in the office at the company. | had just finished correcting algorithms to track our precious last night's intruders when Alan and Norton showed up. “Mind tellingagain, why are we working on Sunday?” Alan groaned, sitting by his computer. “Because | don’t want those bastards to cover the tracks. | want their physical location, what computers they used, everything,” | said decisively. “I don’t mind working on Sunday.” Norton shrugged.

| gave him a crooked smile. “Glad to hear it. Can we get to work now?” Alan’s program was designed to analyze patterns and use them to trace someone more precisely than using an IP address. It was the only way to trace a hacker who frequently changed his IP while breaking into the system. It was like forcing a hacker to leave bread crumbs that would eventually lead us to the real place he was connected to, but it could take time.

“If we assthat those hackers could be anywhere in the world, it will probably take a month before we find their physical addresses, but we can also take a risk and select a specific area. Then we can either find them within hours... or run in circles and find nothing at all,” Alan explained.

My instincts kept tellingthat those who broke into Lan Diamond Corporation’s system were the so-called “specialists” that Max talked about. If that was the case, then we could narrow our search, but if | was wrong, then | could waste all our efforts. The problem was that we didn’t have a whole month to find those jerks.

| made my decision. “Let’s limit our search to New York state.” We spent all day checking every single inteconnection in the twenty-million population. It was monotonous and exhausting work that required constant excluding of the patterns that weren't exact matches so they wouldn't litter our findings. We all jumped out of our seats as we discovered our first virtual bread crumbs in the New York City area.

“Great job, guys!” | shouted, feeling amazingly relieved that my suspicions were correct.

“Yeah!” Alan roared. “It won't be long now!” Four hours later, we were circling in the sarea with one other trail leading us to the east and the other in the opposite direction. Our intruders used many gates and filters that eventually spread our tiny bread crumbs all over the city. We ended up arming Alan’s software with tons of additional algorithms, turning our search into an automatic process. The amount of work drained us completely, making Norton fall asleep under the desk; Alan landed on the sofa, and | eventually fell asleep sitting with my face splashed on the desktop. | woke up a few hours later, feeling a red flashing light assaulting my eyes. It tooka minute to focus my sight on the screen, but when I did, | burst into a mad scream. “Jesus fucking Christ! Could you mind my eardrums?!” Alan growled as he returned to consciousness.

| pointed at the screen, grinning like an idiot. “Location found!” Alan jumped up, lurched onto the desktop, and then started laughing. “This is fucking amazing!” | got up from my seat and we both started happy-dancing all over the office. It took us another minute to realize that Norton was still sleeping soundly, unaffected by all of the noise. Alan crouched down next to him. “Hey! Sleeping Beauty, wake up! We've found those fuckers!” Norton yawned and slowly opened his sleepy eyes. “You don’t need to shout. | can hear you.” Once he finally crawled from under the desk, we could officially check the result of our chase. | clicked on the map; the location was in Manhattan, not too far away from the Lan Diamond Tower. All three attacks cfrom one place, an office building on Broadway.

“Do we know what companies have their offices there?” | asked, hoping to find anything that sounded familiar.

Norton grabbed his tablet, and a few seconds later, showedthe entire list of companies from that building. | read it carefully, but nothing caught my attention. However, | had little knowledge about Aren’s competitors, and there was only one person who could point out the possible suspects...

Sighing heavily, | grabbed my phone to send a message to Aren, but then | noticed that he had tried to callseveral times and senta few texts as well. In those messages, he wisheda good day, askedif | had eaten, and warnednot to overwork myself. | smiled, wondering if he was still the arrogant Aren | met. Maybe he truly was trying, but it wasn’t enough to makebelieve he could permanently change. | sent him brief information that we found the location of where the previous night's attack cfrom. He didn’t reply. After a minute, | heard a knock on the door, making Alan, Norton, andscream like little girls.

“Jesus! Are you trying to scare the shit out of us?!” | yelled as | opened the door and saw Aren standing in the corridor. “It’s 4 AM! | was convinced that we were the only ones in the company!” Aren chuckled and stepped inside our office. “It's my company, remember? Besides, do you think that | will let my wife work while | stay at home?” | cleared my throat. “I saw that you called and messaged me... why didn’t you just drop by our office since you were already here?” He smiled wryly. “After you decided to sneak you in the morning, | decided to give you sspace...” Alan and Norton stared at us curiously, as if they were only missing a box of popcorn to enjoy watching my conversation with Aren. | smiled awkwardly at them before shifting my attention to my husband. “Can | talk to you in your office?” | suggested, feeling that a further discussion in front of Alan and Norton would not lead to anything good.

Aren’s eyes widened. “Of course,” he said, and gestured atto walk out first. | told my wonder-boys to go hand get ssleep while | took the list of companies and went to Aren’s office. Once he closed the door behind us, | becnervous. It remindedof when we had sex there. Suddenly, my mind sentall kinds of lewd images of us together on his sofa, on his desk... | took a deep breath.

“Focus, Cora. You need to focus,” | muttered under my breath.

Aren smiled atand walked to his three-piece suite, invitingto sit down.”So, who wanted to steal our data?” he asked, sitting in the armchair.

| chuckled nervously. “We don’t know who, but we know what the hackers’ location was during the attack.” | showed Aren the map with the spot marked with a red cross and then handed him a list of companies from the building. “So you can’t point out exactly who did it?” he asked, his smile fading.

“Well... there is a chance to do that. We can confirm the wave pattern and even point to the specific computer that was used, but we need to walk to that building with our equipment and stand less than ten feet from the spot. Then we can suck in the information. It’s like marking the finish line. Then we can use that in court because this proof cannot be faked,” | claimed confidently. Aren nodded and then raised his eyebrows questioningly. “And without walking into the building?” 5] | shook my head. “Without it, all we have is that the signal cfrom that building. | believe that Jack would call it circumstantial evidence-not enough to sentence anyone.” Aren sighed. “I understand. | also believe that tis crucial here to get them, right?” | smiled hesitantly. “The trick is that they don’t know that they got caught, but if they knew, they would try to get rid of their stuff, destroying the evidence.’ A sour smile formed on Aren’s lips. “The problem is, | need to leave tomorrow. | was in a coma, and there's another problem with our ships in Europe. | can’t deal with it right now.” My heart suddenly filled with a sense of longing at the mere thought that he would be gone.” How long?” | muttered.

“About a week. We will need to cancel our interviews. | will cback to New York just so we can go to China together,” he said.

Why did it feel like a stab in the heart? Inside my mind, | had already marked our trip to China as likely being our final days together. | even decided to avoid him in the meantime! But now, everything insidescreamed, “Don’t let him go!” Busting te truders “OK,” | breathed out. “Then you are leaving...?” “My flight is at nine o'clock; in less than five hours that is.” He looked atwith eyes that seemed to be as sad as mine.

| stretched my lips into a thin smile, struggling to change the subject. “So... do you see any company that is Lan Diamond Corporation’s competition, or its owner wants you dead?” | laughed awkwardly. Aren scrolled the list and smirked. “It’s an old list.” | narrowed my eyes at him. “Why is that?” He pointed at one of the companies.

“That company changed its na year ago. It is no longer called Mondo Dei Sogni... Its current nis Blue Dreamland.” “What?!” | burst out. Aren laughed. “It wouldn't surpriseif they were the ones who tried to steal our data, but I'm not sure what | have ever done to the owner. | don’t think that | even know the guy.” “Then...

we need to go to that building! We need to confirm that -” “Absolutely not!” Aren frowned. “I cannot be there, and | won't allow you to go there alone!” “But it might be our only chance, and | believe that we can find so many answers —"” “No.” Aren stood up and locked his black irises on me. “Promisethat you will not go there” - he leaned over me, his forehead touching mine-“please.” | could sense that he was greatly worried, but | wasn't a child, and | felt that going into that building could solve a lot of our problems. “I promise... | will not go there alone. Besides, I'm a celebrity right now. | cannot go anywhere without being recognized.” I laughed.

“Thank you.” He leaned overand kissed my cheek. Well, | lied only partially: | was going to take someone with me, and | was going in disguise...