Page 49 of Alien War Daddy's Got Rizz
I let her digest that.
Then her eyes flick just slightly.
“What should we do?” she asks.
I pause.
Not because I don’t know.
But because she asked.
“No reactionary moves,” I say. “No exposing sources. No confrontation without proof you can use. We watch. We map. We respond when we have a position of strength.”
She exhales — slow, deliberate — like she’s just asked someone else to hold the leash on a hurricane.
Then she meets my gaze.
I don’t look away.
We both know what this means.
This breach isn’t just technical. It’s personal.
It touches every corner of the company. Every timid employee. Every whisper of doubt.
And beneath all that?
It touches her.
I feel it — in every line of her face, in the tension of her shoulders, in the way her breath catches when Tidball’s name crosses her lips.
I don’t reach out again.
I don’t need to.
She already sees it.
The screen fades to black when she minimizes the data window.
The café around us hums — latte machines, conversation, the scrape of chairs against tile — normal life happening like oblivious machinery.
She sits back.
A fragile exhale.
But there’s steel in her voice.
“We have to be careful,” she says. “If Tidball knows we’re onto him…”
“Two things will happen,” I say.
Her gaze lifts.
“First,” I continue, eyes steady, voice calm but fierce, “he will retreat into deeper shadows and make everything look like coincidence.”
“And second?”
“Then we watch until he slips.”
