[...your retina.]
Elara's breath caught for a fraction of a second, but she refused to turn her face away. Julian's gray eyes sharpened, gleaming with both danger and pure intellectual allure. The man's thumb against her cheekbone felt cold, a stark contrast to the heat of the Absolute System's warning that was still faintly blinking at the edge of her vision.
"An optical neural interface," Julian murmured, almost as if speaking to himself. His hand finally released Elara's jaw, and he stepped back, sliding both hands into his trouser pockets. His posture relaxed again, but his vigilance had increased several times over. "No satellite relay. No trace of radio frequencies. You're using your own body's electrical impulses as a basic power source and hacking this city's underground fiber-optic infrastructure as a transmission route. Very grounded, very... lethal."
Elara slowly rubbed her jaw, keeping her voice as cold as ice. "As I said, Mr. Vance, I didn't come here to be interrogated about my hardware architecture."
Julian walked toward the minibar in the corner of the room and poured two glasses of whiskey without ice. "Then why would a Sterling heiress go to the trouble of sneaking into her father's sworn enemy's penthouse? You just brutally kicked your own fiancé out of the boardroom—yes, my security cameras hacked back into your meeting-room CCTV when your system cut the connection. Quite an entertaining drama."
Julian turned and offered one of the crystal glasses to Elara.
Elara didn't take it. "I came to offer an alliance."
Julian's hand paused in midair for a moment before he pulled the glass back and slowly drank from it himself. He chuckled, his deep baritone full of scorn. "An alliance? You and me? Your company is an ant compared to Vance Industries, Ms. Sterling. And that illegal device in your eye, impressive as it may be, doesn't give you enough leverage to sit at the same table as me."
"What if I told you I know where the blueprints for Project Aegis are?"
Silence instantly fell over the room. The atmosphere, previously dominated by Julian's casual arrogance, abruptly transformed into suffocating pressure. The man's eyes darkened. He set the crystal glass on the table with a chime far too sharp.
Project Aegis. Quantum cybersecurity technology designed by Julian's late father. Five years ago—right before Elara's regression in this timeline—the prototype was stolen from the most secure vault in Metropolis, causing Julian's father to die of a heart attack and nearly bringing Vance Industries to ruin before Julian took over with an iron fist.
"Who told you the name of that project?" Julian hissed, stepping forward and closing the distance between them until there was no room to breathe. His murderous instincts radiated from him.
Elara looked up, meeting that deadly stare without blinking. "No one told me. My system found it embedded in the financial data trail of the western branch of the Vance family—your own uncle. They used a rival conglomerate, Vanguard Holdings, as a proxy to launder the money from selling your father's technology."
Julian's eyes widened slightly as he grasped the connection. "Vanguard Holdings... that's a shell company owned by Adrian."
"Exactly," Elara replied, the corners of her lips lifting into a thin, lethal smile. "Adrian and your uncle are working together. Adrian gets the financial backing and access to bring down my father, while your uncle uses Adrian's network to hide the trail of the Aegis theft. They protect each other from the shadows of this Metropolis world."
Julian fell silent. His brilliant mind processed the information at astonishing speed. If the woman before him was telling the truth, then this was the missing puzzle piece he'd been searching for all these years. Revenge for his father.
"Help me destroy Adrian and cut off all his logistics routes tonight," Elara made her final offer. "In return, I'll use my system to map your uncle's entire money trail, giving you irrefutable physical evidence to put him in prison and reclaim Aegis."
Julian looked at Elara differently now. He no longer saw a naive girl, but a reflection of ambition and ruthlessness equal to his own. He leaned forward, bracing one hand against the glass wall right beside Elara's head and trapping her there.
The scent of sandalwood and mint wafted faintly from Julian's body, mingling with the electric tension between them.
"You realize you're playing with fire, Ms. Sterling?" Julian whispered, his voice hoarse. "You're offering a pact with the devil. But I don't trust sweet words easily. I need a guarantee."
"What kind of guarantee?"
Julian smiled crookedly, his gaze dropping briefly to Elara's lips before locking onto her eyes again. "If you can't hand over the encrypted data on Aegis's location within twenty-four hours, I'll make sure that thing in your eye..."