Page 7 of Make Them Cry

Me, trying not to fall for a girl who won’t even drink my decaf peace offering.

River doesn’t know who I am. Not really.

She knows the surface: sarcastic coworker, smug tech lead, the guy who makes her life harder on purpose.

She doesn’t know I’ve had a silent Google Alert on her name since her first thread blew up last year.

She doesn’t know I once spent a whole night reverse-engineering a burner IP because someone posted her address in a private Discord.

She doesn’t know I deleted it before she ever saw.

She thinks I’m the enemy. The office thorn in her side. I let her think it because it’s safer—for both of us.

But today?

Today that ends.

I switch from Discord to a shared folder Arrow set up back when we built “The Mask” identity. After what we did for Juno, we kept the systems live. Just in case. There’s always a new monster.

I drag River’s file into it.

Evidence. Screenshots. Captured threats. The “see you in the lobby” message. The photo from outside her window I pulled off a forum last night that still makes my blood boil. I caught the thread before it went viral. Archived the IP. Killed the link.

Arrow adds a flame emoji reaction to the folder. Knight adds a thumbs up.

Then a text hits my personal phone.

ARROW: You sure about this?

ME: yeah.

ARROW: You’re not just doing this because she’s hot, right?

ME: …she’s infuriating.

ARROW: that’s not a no.

I huff a laugh and minimize the thread.

I think about how her voice sounded when she told Helena she wanted to talk aboutsafety, nottone.She doesn’t know I overheard that. Doesn’t know I lingered in the hallway andclenched my fists so tight my nails left marks. Doesn’t know I fantasized about breaking every term of service on the internet to ruin the people hurting her.

I think about the moment she stood frozen at her desk earlier, knuckles white around her phone. I wanted to reach across the aisle, take it from her hands, and handle it.

Instead, I handed her decaf.

Coward.

I lean back in my chair and stare at the ceiling tiles. There’s a coffee stain shaped like Florida. I hate it. I kind of love it. I’ve been staring at it since I joined this company three years ago and slowly learned that most people don’t look up.

But I do.

Because the patterns are up there. And right now, River Quinn’s pattern is off.

I open another screen. Onion browser. The one with access to the forum Juno found last spring. The vigilante one. Where justice doesn’t need a warrant—just rules.

I never thought I’d need to use it again. We got our revenge. Saved Juno. Exposed the masked cowards who killed her sister.

But evil doesn’t retire. It just changes usernames.