Evelyn knew that having an asset was not the same as having an opening. Mark was a key, but Damien's Gilded Leash was a cage of layered, overlapping surveillance. Any direct, repeated contact with a technician would be flagged, analyzed, and would undoubtedly lead back to her. She couldn't afford to be direct. She needed a diversion.
Her strategy, she decided, must be one of layers. She needed to create a bright, shiny object so compellingly suspicious that it would draw Damien's obsessive attention, forcing him to pour his formidable resources down a false path. Her "Secret Lover" gambit was the perfect tool. It was time to give him a new breadcrumb.
She approached him that evening in the vast, silent living area. He was reading a financial report on his tablet, the cold blue light reflecting in his dark eyes. She had perfected her role: a woman walking on eggshells, slightly timid, but with a request she couldn't suppress.
"Damien," she began, her voice soft, hesitant. "I know this is an unusual request, but… there's a book. One I've been searching for for years. It's quite rare."
He looked up, his expression impassive, but she could feel the weight of his full, analytical attention settle on her.
"It's a study of pigments used by artists in Renaissance Florence," she continued, carefully measuring her words. "I know your resources are… extensive. I was hoping you might be able to help me locate a copy."
The word "Florence" hung in the air between them. It was the location she had mentioned in the fabricated text messages from her burner phone. To an outsider, her request was academic and harmless. To Damien, it was a klaxon horn, a massive red flag flapping in the wind of his suspicion.
His mind raced, she could almost see the calculations whirring behind his eyes. Florence. The artist. Was this a coded message? Was the book itself a signal? Was the rare book dealer who sold it the conduit for their communication?
A slow, cold smile touched his lips. It did not reach his eyes. "Of course, Evelyn," he said, his voice a smooth, dangerous purr. "I would be happy to help you find your book. Anything to support your… passions."
He picked up his own tablet, and Evelyn knew exactly what he was doing. He was contacting Arthur Vance. His new mission would be clear: Acquire the book. I want a full provenance of the specific copy we find. I want to know every person who has ever owned it. And I want the seller placed under immediate and total surveillance.
Damien had taken the bait. Hook, line, and sinker.
With her fiancé's obsessive gaze now fixed on a wild goose chase across the globe, Evelyn knew she had her window. It would be small, but it would be enough. She needed to contact Mark.
Her plan was simple. She knew the technicians performed weekly diagnostics on the penthouse's internal servers, which were housed in a discreet utility closet off the main residential hallway. She learned the schedule. The following afternoon, she created a reason to be there. Dressed in athletic wear, she was returning from the penthouse's private gym at the exact moment Mark was finishing his duties, his toolkit in hand.
Their meeting looked entirely accidental.
"Mark," she said, her voice a low, urgent whisper as she fell into step beside him. He flinched, startled.
"Ms. Hayes."
"A small favor," she said, a friendly but conspiratorial smile on her face. "I'm having a persistent issue with my tablet's cloud storage. It keeps giving me an error message—'insufficient network privileges.' It's terribly frustrating. Could you possibly look into my user profile and see what the problem is?"
The request was a stroke of technical genius. It sounded like a mundane, trivial IT problem any employee might have. But what she was truly asking for was a copy of her own user profile and permissions log. That log was a treasure map. It would detail exactly which parts of the Blackwood network her profile could access and, more importantly, which parts it couldn't. It was the next critical piece of her reconnaissance.
She pressed a tiny, folded piece of paper into his hand as they walked. It was so small his fingers easily concealed it. "Just a private email address," she murmured. "For when you have the diagnostic report. For my records."
Mark's eyes widened in panic, but he gave a short, jerky nod. The weight of the cash she'd given him, and the intoxicating danger of her proposal, had done their work. He was in too deep to say no to such a simple "IT request." He pocketed the paper and hurried away.
The chapter ends with two scenes, running in parallel.
In a dusty, antique bookshop in Rome, a nondescript man in a grey coat—Arthur Vance—is quietly negotiating the purchase of a rare, leather-bound book on 15th-century Florentine pigments, his eyes missing nothing.
And in her silent, opulent suite, Evelyn sits with her tablet. A notification pops up. A new message in a specially created, encrypted email account. It is from an anonymous source. Attached is a single file: EHayes_Permissions_Log.txt.
She had used Damien's obsession as the perfect alibi. His hunt for a phantom lover had provided the cover for her to take one step closer to his secrets. She opened the file, her face illuminated by the data scrolling across the screen, a small, triumphant smile playing on her lips.