Lucas left before dawn.
By the time sunlight stretched across the mansion's polished floors, he was already in the backseat of the car, one hand over his forehead, the other scrolling through reports on his tablet. His jaw was clenched tighter than usual, and his eyes held a familiar sharpness — the look he wore only when something had gone terribly wrong at Caden Corporation.
His phone buzzed nonstop.
Message after message.Board alerts.Security notifications.Emergency call requests.
He didn't respond to a single one.
Instead, he stared outside as the city blurred past — steel, glass, and fog merging into an emotionless palette. But his mind was nowhere near the city. It was replaying the bizarre silence from the night before.
Amara's silence.His own inability to speak.The strange tension that felt like a rope pulled too tight.
He shook his head, irritated at himself.
There was no time for emotional distractions. Not today.
Because Caden Corporation, the empire he had built with blood-soaked determination, was under threat.
****************************************
The news reports didn't know the truth.
The entire world believed Lucas grew the company because he was a business genius — a young prodigy who turned a dying startup into a financial backbone of the country. That part was true. But the world didn't know why he built it.
He built it because he had no home.
Because when his mother died when he was fifteen, the Dragovich mansion — once filled with warmth and laughter — became hell.
His father's punishments became arbitrarily cruel.The house filled with strangers — mistresses, children from those affairs, power-chasing relatives.Rooms were filled with greed and whispers.
His mother was the only one who had ever protected him.And when she was gone, he became a threat to everyone who wanted the Dragovich fortune.
He was seventeen when he was thrown out.
Not legally.Not publicly.But ruthlessly.
His father had told him, voice dripping with cold disdain:
"You were her mistake. I don't owe you anything."
And the mansion doors closed behind him.
At first, Lucas didn't understand. He stood outside with just a backpack and the clothes on his back. Nobody came after him. Nobody pitied him. Nobody tried to stop his father.
But someone watched from a balcony — the only person with even a sliver of humanity in that family.
His grandfather.
The old man didn't rush to help him.Didn't shelter him.Didn't offer financial assistance.He simply looked down from above, eyes sharp with the same ruthless intelligence Lucas inherited.
He knew Lucas would survive.He knew Lucas had the mind to build something formidable.He knew giving Lucas comfort would weaken him.
And more importantly:
The Dragovich empire was still stable at that time.His son, despite being incompetent, hadn't yet begun destroying the company.So the grandfather allowed things to play out.
He didn't intervene because he believed:
"If Lucas is worthy, he will build his own legacy."
And Lucas did.
He used the last remaining symbol of his mother — her surname, Caden — and founded a company with nothing but a laptop and desperation.
Within five years, Caden Corporation went from a two-person desk to a multi-billion-dollar enterprise.
By the time Lucas was twenty-four, the world whispered his name with respect and fear.
He became untouchable.
And the Dragovich family learned the hard way that the boy they had discarded had become a man who could destroy them.
*********************************************************
The elevator doors slid open and Lucas strode through the hallway, long steps echoing against polished floors.
Caden Tower was awake before the rest of the city — screens flickering, servers humming, analysts already buried in dashboards.
But today, there was an unusual heaviness in the air.
His VP, Adrian Hale, was waiting near Lucas's office. Tall, composed, and dressed in a charcoal suit, Adrian had the same tense expression that Lucas rarely saw on him.
They had known each other since they were eleven.
They grew up in the same elite school where Lucas had been an outcast after his mother's death.
Adrian was one of the very few who stood beside him when his father threw him out.
That loyalty had never changed.
But right now, Adrian's expression held something that made Lucas stop walking.
"Talk," Lucas said simply.
Adrian exhaled, controlled but clearly uneasy.
"We found something this morning during our routine cross-system validation."
Lucas removed his glasses as he walked into his office.
He didn't like dramatic pauses.
Adrian knew that, so if he was hesitating, the situation was complicated.
"How bad is it?" Lucas asked, settling behind his desk.
Adrian shook his head.
"It's not an active breach. Our firewalls and adaptive encryption stopped any intrusion attempts before they even touched critical data."
Lucas leaned back.
"So then why all the escalations?"
Adrian finally said it:
"Because the only way Dragovich Industries could have attempted the breach at all… is if someone from inside gave them our architectural schematics."
The room went silent.
Lucas lifted his eyes — cold, sharp, unreadable.
Adrian continued, voice lower:
"Not a cyberattack. Not an external hack. Someone gave them information that no outsider could possibly obtain."
Lucas didn't speak for a few seconds.
He wasn't shocked — shock was not something he indulged in.
But he felt the flicker of something else: calculation.
"How old are these leaked schematics?" Lucas asked.
Adrian swallowed. "Not old. At most, three months."
Three months.
Meaning someone close to the new data cluster project.
Someone trusted.
Someone high enough to access the core architecture.
Lucas tapped his fingers on the table — a slow, rhythmic pattern that only Adrian understood meant he was analyzing hundreds of possibilities simultaneously.
"Did you run an internal access log audit?" Lucas asked.
"Already done," Adrian replied. "But whoever did this was smart. They used a temporary access pathway from a system with outdated privileges. It looks forged."
"Looks forged," Lucas repeated."Or was made to look forged."
Adrian nodded."Exactly."
Lucas stood up and walked to the glass wall overlooking the city. Sunlight bounced off the skyscrapers. A beautiful, calm morning — completely at odds with the implications of what he had just heard.
He knew his father too well.
Dragovich didn't attack blindly.
He didn't take risks unless someone guaranteed him an advantage.And the only way he'd get that advantage was if a traitor inside Caden helped him.
Lucas spoke quietly, his voice edged with steel.
"Dragovich thinks leaking schematics will corner me."
Adrian looked at him. "…Will it?"
Lucas turned. His eyes were razor-sharp.
"No."
Adrian nodded — he expected that answer.
Lucas continued:
"The systems they got access to are already outdated. I changed the entire cluster architecture last month. Personally."
Adrian's posture eased a little.
Nobody in the company understood their tech better than Lucas himself.
Despite being CEO and owner, he still reviewed core code.
Still checked system security himself weekly.
Still designed new architecture models when needed.
He didn't rely solely on teams.
He trusted only what he saw with his own eyes.
Lucas returned to his seat.
"The breach attempt doesn't concern me. The leak does."
Adrian agreed. "That's the real threat."
Lucas's tone shifted, lower and colder:
"We need to find the insider. Quietly. No announcements. No panic. No suspicion. Pull the full internal access logs — all departments connected to infrastructure, security, development, and server operations."
"And the executives?" Adrian asked.
Lucas's expression didn't soften.
"Especially the executives."
Adrian nodded.
"We'll isolate the individuals with access to the outdated schematics first."
Lucas added:
"And cross-check financials. Anyone suddenly receiving unexplained transfers, asset spikes, unusual purchases — flag them. Someone was bought."
Adrian hesitated before speaking again.
"There's… one more thing."
Lucas looked up. "Speak."
"This attempt wasn't launched from Dragovich headquarters."
Lucas's brows narrowed slightly — subtle, but enough.
"So?"
"It was routed through a private network. Encrypted under a different name."
Lucas waited.
Adrian finally revealed it:
"The server is registered under one of the Dragovich subsidiaries… but the operational access signature belongs to someone else."
"Who?"
Adrian breathed out.
"Your father's chief strategist. Stefan Vortek."
Lucas's jaw tightened but his voice stayed controlled.
Of course.
Stefan — the same man who whispered poison into his father's ears.The same man who had orchestrated half the manipulations in the Dragovich boardroom.The same man who hated Lucas simply because Lucas refused to be controlled.
It made sense.If Dragovich wanted to attack, Stefan would be the one to plan it.
Lucas's eyes cooled further.
"Inform security to monitor Stefan's digital footprints. Discreetly. And tighten our internal grid. Use manual oversight only. No automated alerts."
Adrian nodded. "Already in motion."
Then Lucas asked the question that mattered most:
"Does Dragovich know the attempt failed?"
Adrian shook his head."We blocked it in milliseconds. From their side, it will look like the system was down or shielding. They won't know whether they succeeded or failed."
A slow, dangerous smile touched Lucas's lips — brief, controlled, lethal.
"Good."
He stood again, adjusting his cuffs.
"Let them think they made progress. Let them get comfortable. Let them believe they're winning."
Adrian exhaled, understanding the strategy.
Lucas finished:
"We'll watch.We'll track.We'll wait."
His voice dropped to a cold whisper:
"And when the traitor reveals themselves — we'll crush both them and Dragovich in one move."