Page 158 of Sexting My Best Friend's Brothers
[Unknown User]: I don’t want money. I want to watch you squirm. Let’s start with a public statement admitting your security is a joke. Post it on the homepage. Then we can talk about the price.
“They want to humiliate us,” I realize, the pattern finally emerging. This isn’t financial; it’s entirely personal. “This is a vendetta.”
“Fix it,” Ethan orders, his voice dropping to a terrifyingly calm register. “I don’t care how you do it. I don’t care if you have to burn the rest of the app to the ground. Protect the Confessions. You have two hours.”
“I need silence,” I say. “Everyone out. Except Owen. I need you to monitor the social channels in case they leak early.”
Ethan gives a sharp, military chin-lift. “I’ll handle Sterling. I need to come up with a convincing lie about why the system is lagging before his auditors notice.”
He turns to leave, but the glass door to the server room slides open before he can reach it.
It is Tessa.
The atmospheric pressure in the room hits a new, volatile frequency. Usually, her presence is a variable that drastically improves system performance, balancing Ethan’s aggression and Owen’s chaos while grounding me.
But today, my internal diagnostics flash a red warning the second she enters.
Catastrophic.
She is wearing a gray blazer that hangs off her frame, wrapping it around her body like armor. Her skin, usually a warm, vibrant tone, is the color of old parchment. There is a sheen of cold perspiration on her upper lip, and her eyes are glassy as she leans heavily against the metal doorframe.
“I heard shouting,” she says, her voice thin and reedy. “What’s happening? Why are the devs running around like the building is on fire?”
“Security breach,” Ethan says, stepping between her and the monitors in an instinctive maneuver to shield her from the disaster. “We’re handling it. You should go back to your desk.”
“Don’t handle me, Ethan,” she says, pushing past him. She walks toward us, but her steps are uneven, and she sways, forcing herself to correct her balance at the last second. “I’m the Brand Strategist. If we’re having a crisis, I need to know how to spin it. Is it a crash? A leak?”
“It’s a hostage situation,” Owen says quietly.
Tessa stops dead, her eyes darting from the red code scrolling on my screen to the active chat window from the hacker.
“Confessions,” she whispers, bringing a trembling hand to her mouth. “They have the Confessions?”
“They are threatening to leak them in just under two hours,” I say, not looking away from the screen, though every primal instinct in my body wants to go to her. “I am currently attempting to isolate the specific node they are using to bypass the encryption. It is… highly difficult.”
“Okay,” Tessa says, taking a deep, shuddering breath as the remaining color drains completely from her face. She is nauseous. Visibly, violently nauseous. “Okay. I can draft a holding statement. We need to prepare for the worst-case scenario. If the leak happens, we need to frame it as a targeted attack on privacy and position ourselves as victims alongside the users…”
She reaches for a heavy chair, dragging it over to my desk. The metal legs screech against the floor, and the harsh sound seems to physically hurt her, making her flinch and squeeze her eyes shut.
“Tessa,” I say, my fingers pausing over the keys for a millisecond. “You are unwell.”
“I’m fine,” she says, sitting down heavily. “Just a headache. Focus on the code, Asher. I’ll handle the PR.”
“You are not fine,” I insist. My brain splits into two parallel processes. Thread A: Stop the hacker. Save the company. Thread B: Protect Tessa.
She is operating at critical failure levels—her pallor is significant, her tremors are visible, and her breathing is far too shallow.
“Asher, look at the screen!” Owen shouts.
I snap my attention back to the monitor as the red code spikes violently.
[Unknown User]: Tick tock. I’m getting bored. Maybe I’ll leak a few early. Let’s see... User #8902. "I'm sleeping with my boss and his brother." Oof. Spicy.
A spike of pure ice hits my veins.
“That’s a bluff,” Ethan says, moving to stand closely behind my chair. “Random generation.”
“It is not random,” I whisper, staring hard at the command lines.
