The silence in the opulent hallway was deafening. The only sound was the faint hum of the air conditioning and the rhythmic tapping of Leo's tiny finger against his laptop's trackpad.
Alexander Sterling, a man who had brought multinational conglomerates to their knees without blinking, stared at the juice-drinking toddler.
"A recursive deletion algorithm," Alexander repeated slowly, the words tasting foreign on his tongue. His ice-blue eyes shifted from the boy's laptop to the boy's face. It was impossible. Yet, the mathematical reality of the timeline—five years—and the biological reality standing right in front of him were undeniable.
"With an $O(n)$ time complexity," Leo confirmed, his voice completely devoid of a child's typical inflection. He pushed his glasses up his small nose. "Your system architects failed to utilize abstract classes properly to secure the core data layer. I can easily redefine the pointers to your offshore asset arrays as a final variable set to zero. No inheritance, no overriding. It becomes immutable. Would you like a demonstration?"
Evelyn felt her soul temporarily leave her body. Her five-year-old was threatening to permanently wipe out the liquid assets of the most ruthless billionaire in the hemisphere using basic object-oriented programming principles.
"Leo, close the laptop. Now," Evelyn commanded, her voice cracking slightly as she quickly stepped sideways, shielding her son with her own body. She glared at Alexander, her heart hammering wildly against her ribs. "He's just a child, Mr. Sterling. He plays coding games online. It's an overactive imagination."
Alexander's gaze slowly dragged up from the spot where Leo had been standing, locking onto Evelyn's pale, defiant face. The dark storm in his eyes was terrifying.
"A child," Alexander echoed, stepping closer until the toes of his handmade Italian leather shoes touched hers. "A child who just bypassed a multi-million-dollar enterprise firewall, tracked my physical location, and accurately critiqued my server's data encapsulation protocols."
He leaned down, his voice dropping to a dangerous, intimate whisper that sent a shiver straight down her spine. "And a child who has my exact eyes, my jawline, and my terrifying lack of patience."
Evelyn stopped breathing. The air between them crackled with an intense, suffocating tension.
"I don't know what you're implying," she lied through her teeth, her chin tilting up in stubborn defiance. "My son has nothing to do with you. We are leaving."
She reached behind her, grabbing Leo's small hand. "Come on, Leo."
"Move a single inch," Alexander said, his voice deadly soft, "and I will have my legal team draft federal cyber-terrorism charges before you reach the elevator. I imagine the authorities would be very interested in how a 'coding game' crashed the Sterling Empire's mainframe."
Evelyn froze. She turned back to him, her eyes flashing with pure rage. "You wouldn't dare. He is five years old!"
"Try me," Alexander countered, his gaze unflinching. The cold, calculating predator was back in full force. He pulled his phone from his inside breast pocket, his eyes never leaving hers. "You have exactly two options, Miss..." He paused, realizing he didn't even know her name yet.
"Evelyn," she spat out. "Evelyn Vance."
"Miss Vance," Alexander tasted the name, a dark smirk playing at the corner of his lips. "Option one: I call the authorities, and we let the federal government sort out the IP breach. Option two: My men escort you and... Leo... down to my private car. You will move into my penthouse suite immediately. We will conduct a DNA test, and we will have a very long, very private conversation about what happened five years ago."
Evelyn's knuckles turned white as she gripped her briefcase. Moving into his penthouse? That was practically walking into the lion's den. But looking at the wall of men in black suits blocking the exits, and knowing what Leo had actually done to his servers, she knew she was completely cornered.
Behind her, Leo tugged on her trench coat. "Mommy," he whispered calmly. "Statistically speaking, Option Two provides us with a tactical advantage. His penthouse network is likely connected to his personal devices. I can map his entire internal infrastructure from the inside."
Evelyn nearly choked. Her son wasn't scared; he was treating this like a covert infiltration mission.
Alexander crossed his arms over his broad chest, waiting. "Well, Evelyn? What is it going to be?"