Page 83 of Sexting My Best Friend's Brothers
Ethan went into the server minutes after we finished, found the recording of us on his desk, and nuked it. He overrode the safety protocols.
I slam the laptop shut, my hands shaking.
Why did Asher give me this? Is he blackmailing me? Is he threatening me?
My phone buzzes.
Asher: He scrubbed the server logs. He destroyed the only evidence that proved he broke the contract.
I stare at the text.
Me: Why are you telling me this?
Asher: Because you think he doesn’t care. But a CEO doesn’t destroy his own leverage unless he is protecting someone.
I look at the flash drive.
Ethan purged the file. He destroyed the proof. If he wanted to fire me for cause, that video was his smoking gun. It was his get-out-of-jail-free card. And he incinerated it so no one could ever see it.
Asher: He is trying to save you, Tessa. His methods are just… inefficient.
I pull the drive out and drop it into my purse.
I look at Ethan’s office door. It’s still closed.
He’s trying to save me, by breaking my heart.
I get back to work.
But for the first time in two days, the anger in my chest feels a little less like fire, and a little more like grief.
15
ASHER
The ecosystem is collapsing.
I sit at my desk in the climate-controlled isolation of the server room. Ethan has the glass tower to intimidate investors, and Owen wanders the floor to charm the designers, but I prefer the steady hum of the mainframes.
From this corner, I can see every screen, every exit, and every threat. To an outsider, Mosaic looks functional.
The code is shipping. The beta metrics are green. The “Be Seen” campaign is tracking in the top percentile for engagement.
But I see the micro-fractures.
Ethan is running at 110% capacity. He hasn’t left the building in three days. He sleeps on the leather couch in his office, eats takeout at his desk, and speaks only in commands.
His cortisol levels are visibly critical. He is a machine running without oil, grinding its own gears to dust.
Owen is worse. He is quiet. Owen is never quiet.
The charm is gone, replaced by a sullen, restless energy. He spends his days staring at Tessa’s back and his nights drinking alone at Azul. He is a star that has burned out.
Earlier today, he pushed a commit to the repository without running the unit tests. It broke the login module for three hundred users. I fixed it silently without telling him because, if I told Ethan, Ethan would’ve tried to bury him. Or killed him.
We are degrading. The code is clean, but the hardware—us—is failing.
And Tessa.
