I had given him my spare office keycard once when I forgot my purse at his place.

He had kept it for three days before returning it.

The pieces of the puzzle began to fall into place, fitting together with terrifying precision.

The compliments.

The sudden interest in my routine.

The way he slowly isolated me from my friends in the office.

He had made me feel so small, so dependent on him, that I stopped questioning anything he did.

He didn’t just happen to find a vulnerability in the Romano system.

He had created one.

He had targeted me from the very beginning.

The relationship wasn’t a romance that turned sour.

It was a corporate infiltration.

He had used my credentials to install the Apex backdoor into the shipping database.

I gripped the edge of the desk, my knuckles turning white.

Every bruise he had given me, every harsh word, had been part of keeping me compliant.

If I was too broken to look closely at my own work, I would never notice what he was doing.

I stared at the screen, my eyes burning.