Chapter 2

The Times Square drone show had been legend. People still talked about it. Three hundred synchronized points of light, dancing and weaving in the night sky above the city that never sleeps. They formed hearts, they formed champagne glasses, they formed his face and hers. And for the grand finale, they spelled out the six words he had believed with every fiber of his being: 'Chloe Hayes Loves Ethan Miller.'

It had cost a fortune. It had been a logistical nightmare. But when he saw the look of pure, unadulterated joy on Chloe' s face, watching from a private rooftop terrace, he had thought it was the best money he' d ever spent.

That was the kind of love he' d had for her. Loud, public, and absolute.

They were the golden couple. Everyone said so. They' d grown up together, their families' estates bordering one another. He had been the quiet, brilliant boy, always tinkering with circuits and code. She was the radiant, popular girl who could have had anyone, but who only ever had eyes for him.

Or so he thought.

She was the one who pulled him out of his shell. He remembered her small hand grabbing his in the fourth grade, dragging him away from the library and into the sunlight to play tag. "You think too much, Ethan," she would say, her pigtails flying. She called him 'Ethy,' a name no one else was allowed to use.

He, in turn, called her 'Chloe-Bee,' because she was always flitting from one social group to another, the center of every buzz.

He was known for his stoic demeanor, a cool and logical mind that saw the world in systems and patterns. But with Chloe, he was different. He was soft. He was vulnerable. He would spend weeks designing a custom piece of jewelry for her birthday, or hours coding a small, private game just for the two of them to play.

On their ten-year anniversary of being friends, when they were sixteen, they' d sat on the dock by the lake that separated their properties. He' d given her a locket, and inside, he' d engraved a promise: 'Forever.'

"Forever," she had whispered back, her head on his shoulder. "Always and forever, Ethy."

He had believed her. He had built his entire future around that promise.

The shift was so gradual he almost didn' t notice it. It started when Liam Hayes came into their lives. Liam wasn' t a Hayes by blood. He was adopted, the son of a distant cousin who had passed away, taken in by Chloe' s parents when he was fourteen. He was quiet, with watchful eyes and a story that made everyone feel sorry for him.

At first, Ethan felt sorry for him too. Both he and Chloe made an effort to include him. They took him to movies, invited him to hang out with their friends, treated him like the little brother he now was. Ethan, who had no siblings of his own, had tried to be a friend, showing him the basics of coding, trying to find some common ground.

But something was off. Liam was a shadow, always there, always watching. And slowly, Chloe' s attention began to drift.

It started with small things.

"Hey, I was thinking we could go to that new Italian place tonight," Ethan would say.

"Oh, I can' t tonight," she' d reply, her eyes on her phone. "I promised Liam I' d help him with his history paper. He' s really struggling."

The first time, Ethan had understood. The second time, he' d felt a prickle of annoyance. By the fifth time she' d canceled a date for Liam, a knot of unease had formed in his stomach.

She started spending more and more of her time with her 'brother.' They were always together-studying in the library, going for drives, having inside jokes he wasn't privy to. When he brought it up, she would look at him with wide, innocent eyes.

"Ethy, don' t be silly," she' d say, laughing it off. "He' s my brother. He' s been through so much. He needs me."

And what could he say to that? That he felt a growing, irrational jealousy toward a traumatized teenage boy? He would sound like a monster. So he said nothing. He buried his doubts and told himself he was being possessive and unreasonable.

He poured himself into his work, developing the proprietary AI algorithm that would become the foundation of his first company. He was on the verge of a massive breakthrough, something that would revolutionize data processing. He couldn't wait to share it with Chloe, to lay his success at her feet as he had with everything else.

He was so focused on the future he had planned for them that he didn' t see the present he was actually living in. He saw the canceled dates and the whispered conversations with Liam, but he didn' t comprehend their meaning. He saw the way she looked at Liam, a strange, protective fierceness in her eyes that used to be reserved for him, and he dismissed it as familial affection.

He was a genius in the lab, but a fool in love. He saw the signs of a catastrophic failure in his relationship, but he chose to believe it was just a minor bug in the system, easily patched and forgotten. He never imagined that the entire system was corrupt, and that the person he trusted most was about to execute a command that would cause a total system crash.