Page 10 of Red Dreams

The bubbles burn as I splutter and gasp, champagne dribbling down my chin. Cassie releases me with a disgusted sigh, and I slump forward, coughing violently.

“What do you think Ethan will do when the investigators show how you used his access codes?” Cassie asks while trailing a finger around the rim of the empty flute. “When they find evidence you manipulated his credentials to access the servers after hours?”

Setting the glass down, Cassie returns to her laptop, pulling up logs. “It would destroy him, wouldn't it? Ethan’s dreams of redemption after that college prank, shattered by trusting you. It's your choice, Layla. Either you confess to corporate espionage and pin it on poor Ethan...” She taps a few keys, and another window pops up, lines of damning code next to Ethan's employee ID. “Or you can record a very special message for Daddy dearest.”

My mind races to uncover a solution. I can't let Cassie hurt Ethan. But I also can't give her what she wants—a confession implicating both of us in crimes we didn’t do.

As if reading my thoughts, Cassie taps a few keys and another window pops up, showing lines of code. “See this? With a few alterations, I can make it look like Ethan's been embezzling funds and selling company secrets. His life would be ruined. And it would be all your fault.”

I glare at her, my hands balled into fists despite the zip ties cutting into my skin.

“What’ll it be, Layla?”

I sneer at her, imbuing all my frustration into that single tic in the corner of my mouth. “Neither.”

Unaffected, Cassie shrugs. “Suit yourself.”

She heads toward me with a vicious smile.

4

KADEN

The screams pour from Ethan's laptop speakers, each one dragging a fresh razor down my spine.

“Please...”Layla's voice breaks on a sob.“I can't?—”

The sound of something wet and sharp cuts her off. Her next scream holds a different kind of agony.

My fist goes through the screen, silencing the audio but not the echoes inside my skull. Glass bites into my knuckles, blood trickling onto the shattered display.

“That's not—those screams are fake, right?” Ethan's voice shakes behind me. “Someone's messing with my system right now, making us hear?—”

“My daughter's doing this.”

The confession tastes like charcoal.

“Yourwhatnow?” Ethan chokes. Papers scatter as he stumbles back. “Hold up. You have a kid? An evil tech genius kid? Because she came through some seriously encrypted channels and—” He stops, his face draining of color. “Oh God. There are two of you. Two murderous, terrifying ... wait, how old is she?”

I yank the hard drive from the ruined laptop, my shoulder screaming in protest, but the pain is distant, meaningless.

“Twenty-two. And she learned from someone worse than me.”

“Worse than—” Ethan's nervous laugh dies as another audio file starts playing from his phone now that his laptop is destroyed. Layla's whimpers fill the playroom.

I'm across the room before he can blink, yanking his phone from his pocket and crushing it under my boot.

“She's in our systems,” Ethan whispers. “All of them. Like a ghost in the machine.”

“Then we become ghosts, too.” I move to Ethan’s makeshift desk, finding the children’s craft corner and unrolling a sheet of blank paper. I pluck a black crayon from a cup of them, muscle memory from another life taking over. “Tell me everything you remember about the Siren's Call's layout when you were studying the blueprints on your computer. Every exit, every service entrance.”

“Service entrance?” Ethan rubs his face in thought. “Uh, there's one in back, near the kitchens. I dropped off code for their point-of-sale systems last month. Had to dodge the seafood delivery guys.”

His eyes keep darting to his smashed phone like he's waiting for it to resurrect and scream again.

I press the crayon harder against the paper, letting the sharp strokes anchor me against Layla's fresh cries still ricocheting through my skull. The building takes shape under my hands—three stories of stone and glass wrapped in Greycliff's maritime Gothic aesthetic. But I'm more interested in what lies beneath. Old buildings like this always have secrets rotting in their bones.

“What do you remember?” I demand again. “Where were the stairs located? Elevators?”

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