Page 2 of My Fake Billionaire Damaged Boyfriend

He’s older, his face carved in maturity with wrinkles like an English mastiff dog. “Hey, my new coder is here. Izzy, right? I’ll be with you in a minute. I’m just sending this stranger on his way.”

The other man hardly laughs, offering him a sneering sort of nod instead. “Very funny, Alek. Let’s meet at the same time on Wednesday, okay? And try not to forget about your little notes sheet this time. If you want to make a new standard in the industry, you know it has to pass over my desk first.”

“Don’t worry, old friend. You’ll get my notes. In fact, I’m about to give the task to my new hire here, so hurry out of my building before you scare her off.”

I watch the man leave, his eyes flicking up and down my body as I come to a stand in order to greet my boss. Given the position of my office doorway, there’s an obvious path that leads the man with blue irises to watch me as the elevator doors shut, something about him yanking my attention haphazardly and stealing it away.

“Hello, young lady. I’m Alek Ivica, as I’m sure you already know. How are you liking your new office?”

“It’s great, but a little more than what I was expecting, honestly.” I take my hair back, trying hard to seem at ease around his boisterous appearance, but he’s a tall man with beady eyes that fire shots through my frame—more so than the man who just left. “I thought I was hired on for the entry-level coding job.”

“That was the point of the test, yes, but the end result was a little more than I anticipated, Izzy. You downed my system and not only beat the simulation but mended the software from a third-party device. Besides that, I couldn’t get any of my guys to trace down your IP address for the life of me. It’s like you came in, unplugged everything, fixed it, and then left without a single footprint.”

I blush slightly. “Yeah, sorry. I can go over a little overboard at times, but I didn’t want to do anything wrong, so I rewrote the system.”

“It’s amazing,” he gusts. ‘You did such a good job that I had to bring you here. Without your work, we might be subjected to new ventures of hacking and malware. You’re going to do very important work here, Izzy. And don’t worry, I will compensate you accordingly. How is one-twelve?”

I swallow his words with an edge. “What do you mean,one-twelve?”

“A hundred and twelve thousand, dear. Compensation. You don’t think I’d make you head of coding without some sort of appropriate market standard of pay, do you? This isn’t an entry-level rewrite of code. You’re going to oversee the protection of this place online and keep the hackers out of our customer’s hair. All you have to do is make sure nothing touches the mainframe, and you’re good. Easy enough, right?”

“Ye—Yes, sir,” I pant in awe.

“Good. Go ahead and log into the mainframe and get familiar with it. Remember, if you ever find anything suspicious, just let me know. I don’t need any moles in my company hearing of these issues before me, okay? They’re looking to sell me out to my biggest competitor and that asshole doesn’t need any help in taking me down.”

My brows furrow curiously, “Who is your biggest competitor?”

“Dimitri Wilde. He was just here, the man I introduced to you.”

I part my lips, wanting to ask another set of questions, but he seems to understand my haze of confusion without me having to mention it out loud.

“Yeah, I know we act all friendly and bonded, Izzy. It’s far from the truth. He hates my guts and would do anything in his power to watch me fall. Then again, taking down his family business would be a dear dream of mine. Maybe you can help with that?”

I inch back slightly. “Are you asking me to hack him or something?”

He pauses, his eyes scanning my face as if reading my reaction before he snickers and waves me off without a second thought. “No, no. Of course not, Izzy. That would be illegal, right? We can’t spy on people’s systems like that. Let’s just keep your focus on the malware issues coming at our motherboard, and we can deal with Dimitri later, okay?”

Still slightly uneasy, I can’t help but notice he’s outright lying to me. He most certainly wanted me to do something antagonistic against his competitor that he parades around as a friend, but there’s that old colloquial saying about keeping the enemy close.

Maybe it’s just boy-talk in the tech world. I’ve been a basement graduate for a few years and a fun coder on the side for little freelance gigs around town. I created some websites and fixed some coding issues in people’s personal devices, but I’ve never been at this level of work before.

Perhaps animosity is normal around here and having me mention otherwise would only outcast me from the group. I’ve never fit in anywhere in my life before, but I know I can fit in here.

It just means playing by the boss’ rules, that’s all.

I watch him leave and sink back into my warm, leather chair. My back typically hurts from working with my old wheelie chair at home, but this one is much nicer. Leaning back in my new office, I click around the mainframe for a bit, wondering first what could possibly be haunting a system this large. It would take a really skilled hacker to break through some of this coding, let alone someone who would need countless access permissions and passwords.

Meandering through the gates online, I find an odd little cursor of code that doesn’t belong in the heart of the system. It’s not something I should bring to my boss until I know it’s technically bad, but the fact that it sticks out from the rest of the information here is concerning enough.

Even then, I can’t shake the feeling of those golden irises poking at my body, pricking me with little holes over and over again until I’m nothing but a hole-punched body with gaps of pressuring focus. The weight of Dimitri’s presence is heavy on my shoulders, warm on my cheeks, and painful in my chest.

Something’s not right with Ivica Tech, but until I find out what is wrong here, I’ll keep my mouth shut and my head down. Besides, it’s just a hunch.

Without any solid proof that there’s something fishy here, then there’s no reason to bait my hook.

CHAPTER2

Izzy

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