Page 246 of Love Me in the Dark
It isn’t even in my wheelhouse. Well, the wheelhouse that I was hired for.
But I open the permissions chain anyway. Start backtracking access logs. Whoever flagged this account inactive didn’t read the metadata correctly. There’s a full recovery path buried under a deprecated backup protocol. Essentially, whoever saw this before was too lazy to actually do their goddamn job.
I can do this.
I may not have any power, or any way to do anything real… but I can do this one small thing. And no one will ever know.
I pull it. Bypass the firewall. Reissue the access key.
Ten minutes later, it’s fixed and I shoot an automated email to the client ID letting them know that their archive is accessible.
No one will thank me. No one will even know what I did. Not really
But somewhere, this woman just got memories back that are probably more precious to her than anything else in the world.
And I don’t know why, but that makes it easier to breathe.
For a second, anyway.
I close the ticket, add a note for my internal records, and glance at the untouched sandwich on my desk.
Still can’t eat it.
Still can’t sleep.
I sit in the blue light until my eyes blur and the apartment fades to nothing.
The city hums below me. My inbox is empty. My stomach is hollow.
And I have never felt more alone.
3
ROMAN
Her voice hits different tonight.
I’ve listened to thousands of internal files. Voice memos. Recorded calls. Pitches. Whining complaints from mid-level execs trying to scrape attention like pigeons at my feet. I tune them out in seconds. Not even, if I’m being honest.
But Ivy?
I rewind.
Hit play again.
Over and over.
Just to listen to the soft cadence in her tone.
“Maybe I just want proof I existed. That I said something. That I didn’t just disappear one day without leaving a mark. But who am I kidding? No one will ever miss me.”
I pause it. Thumb hovering over the screen. Just sitting there with her voice echoing in my head like a goddamn pulse I can’t get rid of. Not that I want to.
That’s not a work memo. That’s not a report. That’s a confession. And the acknowledgement that she’s a ghost in this world. This is her secret.
And I shouldn’t have access to it.
But I do.
