Page 94 of Stolen Vows

The attacks on North Cape and Glendale River followed an eerily similar playbook. Both received phishing attempts in the weeks before. Both were hit fast, their networks locked down with demands for cryptocurrency ransoms.

Two is a coincidence. But what if there are more? This could be an emerging pattern, a new player on the board.

I lean back in my chair, rubbing a hand over my jaw.

No, that doesn’t track. The signatures aren’t the same. They’re similar, like cousins. But if it was the same person, they’d be identical.

Unless they’re sloppy.

I adjust some parameters on Sentinel and Oracle and run it against my personal database of established hackers and signatures.

I stare at the screen, watching the code scroll by as the search runs. Minutes tick by, the cursor blinking as it combs through terabytes of data.

The logical part of my brain is locked in, waiting for the data to untangle this puzzle.

But the other part of my brain? It’s shouting at me. To step away from my desk, to cross the hall, to beg my wife to give me a front-row seat to a repeat performance.

I roll my shoulders, force my focus back to the monitor. Numbers. Signatures. Patterns. Not Francesca. Not the way she gasped my name last night.

The search continues, a code flashing across my screen. My eyes scan the first few lines, my mind processing the patterns with the same efficiency I’ve always relied on.

But then there’s a soft shift in the security feed. I should ignore it, keep working. The cameras are there for security. A precaution. But my gaze flicks left before I can stop it.

And there she is.

I shift in my chair, my sweatpants growing uncomfortably tight. I steal a glance at the monitor on my left, a split screen of her bedroom and her bathroom.

She’s lying on her bed, candles lit around the room casting a soft, flickering glow across her delicate features. Romeo is curled up in his crate in the closet, softly snoring, I’m sure.

She’s engrossed in her kindle, eyes scanning the screen as she loses herself in the world of the story. One hand absently twirls the ends of her hair, the silky strands slipping through her fingers like water. The candlelight catches on the golden highlights, making her hair shimmer as it cascades over her shoulders.

She’s been like that for hours now. She once told me binge-reading romance novels should be a national sport. Something about a twenty-four-hour readathon.

I glance at the program, making sure it’s still running and hasn’t hit any snags. But my eyes are continually drawn back to the security feed of my wife’s room. The sight of her, so soft and relaxed, completely absorbed in her book, it tugs at something deep inside my chest.

An idea begins to form, teasing the edges of my mind. This is probably a terrible idea, surely some kind of invasion of her privacy.

But before I can talk myself out of it, my fingers are flying across the keyboard. I download the app and open up a new window in Sentinel to access her account through a tiny window in the code. It takes me less than a minute to bypass the security measures, login, and see her kindle library.

She’s currently sixty-seven percent through book two of a dark mafia why choose romance series. I don’t think I even know what that means.

I scan the titles in her library, intrigue arching my brows with each one. I wonder what kind of books my sunshine wife stays up reading all night.

Curiosity pricks against my skin, and I open book one in the current series she’s reading. It opens to the last page, and I drag the slider at the bottom of the screen back to the one percentage point.

My wife highlighted the dedication.

for my grandma + grandpa

who were unfazed by the spice and read every single book—several times

this one is for you.

My cursor hovers over the highlight, and a note pops up. It’s just the laughing emoji.

Well, now I’m really curious. I click on the annotations icon, and the screen fills with every page she bookmarked and every line she highlighted. I scroll through them, pausing to read a few.

He kisses me like he’s running out of air. Like the next hour, the next minute isn’t guaranteed, and this is how he wants to spend it.

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