The notification appeared at 1:47 PM.
Daniel Chen didn't even need to open it. The header told him everything:
Vanessa Marlow and Adrian Castellane announce their engagement.
He sat motionless in the front of six monitors, but his eyes were fixed on a simple notification in the corner of the main screen, not paying attention to the running lines of codes on the others. The hum of cooling fans was the only sound in his dimly lit basement.
Three years!
Three years of carefully orchestrated miracles that she had attributed to luck, effort and good fortune. He had been fine with that. As long as she was happy, he was happy. He was willing to do anything and everything for her.
The cursor blinked.
He clicked the notification.
The photo loaded.
There she was, looking absolutely gorgeous. Her smile was radiant and captivating—the one he spent three years nurturing, protecting. Now it looked different. Wrong. Like it was for someone else. Like it was mocking him.
Adrian Castellane stood behind her, tall and dignified, his expression showing the satisfaction of someone who had acquired something valuable—the best prize there was, the one he had helped build and polished. His hand wrapped around her waist and she leaned into him.
He felt used.
The caption beneath the header read: Sometimes you don't know what you've been waiting for until it finds you.
Daniel's throat tightened. He forced himself to read the comments. Hundreds already, showering praise and congratulations. Industry leaders. Social media influencers. Celebrities. The moguls of the business world. People whose names shook every industry—names he had seen in classified briefings.
<< You deserve this, Vanessa,
<< What a power couple.
<< Our young master Adrian can't fall for anyone else. Vanessa is the one for him.
<< A perfect match.
<< The marriage of the century.
<< Miss Marlow is at the top of Summit's Elite-Class Ladies list in the country, so they deserve each other. No one stands a chance.
<< Living the dream.
'This could be a prank, right?' Daniel thought.
Perhaps, it was just the media spreading propaganda to direct the spotlight on the recent partnership deal between Marlow Enterprises and Castellane Group—the deal he had helped her struck without her knowing.
He looked at the poster of the announcement: OBSIDIAN MEDIA.
He shook his head in derision as he thought. 'How could this be fake news?'
Obsidian Media is one of the largest media companies in the world, so of course they wouldn't risk their reputation on spreading fake news on something this serious. As though to further drill the reality into him, multiple notifications came in.
DING! DING! DING!
Multiple news agencies and small-time bloggers also posted the same news, some going as far as fabricating cliché romance stories on how their love blossomed to drive traffic to their sites.
He closed the window. Opened his command terminal. Typed three characters and stopped.
The server farms in various cities were running his scripts. Background processes monitoring her digital footprint, flagging threats and clearing obstacles before they could meet her.
A Congressional aide who had been prepared to leak her firm's lobbying work had suddenly discovered his own emails exposed to his wife. A superior competitor who had planned to poach her team had found his company under unexpected government scrutiny. A journalist who had been digging into her past relationships had been offered a better story elsewhere.
All of it invisible. All of it unattributed. All done in the shadows—behind his screens in the basement of his one bedroom apartment.
All for a woman who was now wearing another man's ring.
Daniel pulled up the script directory. His fingers moved across the keys rapidly, highlighting processes, selecting termination protocols. Three years of infrastructure. Thousands of lines of code. Monitoring systems that watched her competitors, her enemies, in every corner of the country.
His hand hovered over Enter.
He couldn't do it. Not yet—maybe not ever.
Instead he pushed back from the desk and climbed the stairs to the apartment's main floor. The space was exactly what it appeared to be: a modest one-bedroom apartment in a forgettable building in an unremarkable neighborhood in Arlington. Nothing that would draw attention or suggest that the person who lived here was anything other than a mid-level IT contractor, which is what Vanessa had believed— what everyone believed.
His phone buzzed. A text from her.
>> I know you saw the news. I wanted to tell you myself, but… I'm sorry, Daniel. You're a good person. You deserve someone who can appreciate what you have to offer.
"No. No, I won't accept this. This can't be real. Vanessa can't... This can't be real. " Daniel said, shaking his head franticly.
He raised his shaky hands to reply her text.
>> Where are you, Vanessa?
Then the system message popped up instead and his text never sent.
<< . . . You have been blocked. You can longer contact this user . . . >>
Daniel stared at the screen and read it again. "No way she blocked me." Daniel muttered in disbelief.
He tried calling her. Straight to voicemail—not even a ring. WhatsApp. Facebook. LinkedIn. Every platform. Blocked. Blocked. Blocked.
He had been blocked!
Daniel was dumbfounded. He stopped blinking as he stared into space in disbelief. Vanessa had blocked him from contacting her. This was supposed to be a wake-up call for him, that all of this was real and not just a figment of imagination, but he just couldn't accept it. He wouldn't let all of his love and efforts go down the drain through a mere 'breakup' text.
He took his jacket from the three-seater in the living room and he rushed out the door in panic to find her. If he couldn't contact her, then he would meet her.
***
Crowds gathered around in front of Marlow Enterprises, following the latest announcement of the grandest couple of the century—or so they tagged it. The people were separated by a circular barrier; the inner circle consisted of reporters from reputable media companies while the outer circle consisted of crowds who had come to catch a glimpse of the fast-rising business prodigy, who had taken the world by storm in the last two years.
Daniel stood amongst the crowd, waiting as he wouldn't be given access into the building—no one was given access. His ride here on his modest motorcycle had made him view things with a little bit more clarity. He had thought it through:
'Could Vanessa be under duress?'
Perhaps there was something else that he didn't know. Maybe she was being threatened. Adrian Castellane wasn't exactly the dashing young master everyone made him out to be. He was going to be there for her, but no matter what, he wasn't going to leave without an explanation.