Page 41 of Alien War Daddy's Got Rizz

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He turns when he hears the door.

His eyes are steady. Red embers set in copper skin. Calm. Too calm for someone blamed for corporate treason.

He doesn’t come toward me. He just stands.

And I can feel him even before I see him fully — like a heat that doesn’t fade at night, like a presence that refuses to be ignored.

I close the door quietly behind me.

Silence stretches for a beat so long it feels like glass under pressure.

Finally I speak.

“It’s attributed to you,” I say. “The breach.”

He doesn’t blink.

“It’s not me,” he says simply.

I walk toward my desk, my heels brushing the floor like distant thunder. “I know you say that,” I say, “but I also know what I saw up there — the logs, the timestamps — so explain it to me.”

He steps forward.

Just a little.

Close enough that I feel the warmth pouring off him in slow, even waves.

“Yara,” he says, voice low — not pleading, just measured. “Everything I’ve done here, I told you about. Nothing is hidden. If there were access, it was with your express permission.”

I want to believe him.

Iwantto.

But this isn’t personal anymore. Not yet. Not until the board starts murmuring about liability and risk and shareholder confidence and where the hell their quarterly projections just disappeared to.

I run my fingers along the edge of my desk — polished glass and maybe half a thousand decisions I made last month that now feel shaky in hindsight.

“I defended you,” I say, voice rough. “In that meeting.”

He nods.

“Because you believed in me,” he says.

“No,” I say, shaking my head. “Because I believed inus.”

He pauses.

And for the first time since this all started — I see something flicker.

Not fear.

Not regret.

Butgravity.

“Yes,” he says, quietly, almost to himself. “You did.”

I swallow past the lump in my throat.

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