POV Floris
I woke up to the kind of emptiness that makes you question whether you actually exist or if you’ve been digitally erased from reality.
My room? Stripped bare. Like someone took a vacuum to my entire existence and sucked out everything that proved I’d ever been here.
No clothes, no laptop, not even my ratty MIT hoodie that I’d lived in for three years. Just a termination letter on my nightstand, signed with Eric’s signature—cold and precise as a scalpel.
Effective immediately. Breach of contract. Violation of trust.
“Violation of trust,” I said out loud, because apparently I talk to myself now. “That’s fucking rich coming from the human surveillance state.”
My brain felt scrambled. Last night came back in jagged pieces—Eric’s face all twisted up with rage and what looked suspiciously like heartbreak. His voice cutting through me like glass.
“You’re the only one who knew about the tapes.”
“I didn’t do it!”
“Then who fucking did?”
The silk ties. His hands were actually shaking as he bound my wrists like I was some kind of criminal. The look in his eyes—like I’d just ripped his heart out and stomped on it wearing cleats.
“Psychotic asshole tied me up over shit I didn’t even do,” I muttered, checking my wrists for marks.
There weren’t any. Eric’s too controlled for that. Even when he’s losing his mind, he’s methodical about it.
But here’s the thing about Eric Brighton—when he cuts you loose, he doesn’t just fire you. He annihilates you. Which meant Jake’s treatment was about to get yanked faster than a viral TikTok getting canceled.
My hands were shaking as I grabbed my phone. Like, legitimately trembling, which is not a great look when you’re trying to save your brother’s life.
“Come on, Jake. Pick up, pick up—”
Straight to voicemail. His voice was all cheerful and normal: “Hey, leave a message and I’ll get back to you!”
Except he wouldn’t get back to me if he was fucking dead.
My phone buzzed. Video message. Unknown number.
I should’ve known better. Every horror movie starts with someone clicking on the thing they shouldn’t click. But when your baby brother’s life is hanging in the balance, you click first and have existential dread later.
The video loaded and my world imploded.
Jake. My brother who’d been doing so much better. Who’d been joking about the shitty hospital Jell-O and flirting with nurses just yesterday.
Now he was on his hospital room floor, looking like he’d been hit by a truck. Three people in scrubs and surgical masks standing over him. But not the good kind of scrubs.
The “we’re pretending to be medical professionals while we terrorize your family” kind.
His breathing was wrong—sharp and desperate like he couldn’t get enough air. One of them held up a sign: “Your sister chose the wrong enemy.”
“No, no, no—” I was crying and I didn’t remember when that started.
The camera moved to Jake’s face. “Floris?” His voice was barely there. “I don’t know what you did, but they say—” He coughed, and there was blood. “They say you have twenty-four hours to fix it or they’re taking me off all my meds.”
And just like that the video cut out.
I stared at the black screen, feeling something fundamental shatter inside my chest. Not crack—completely fucking disintegrate.
They were going to let my brother die of leukemia to get back at me for something I didn’t even do.
“Okay,” I said to my empty room, and my voice sounded weirdly calm. “You want to play games with my family? Game fucking on.”
Because here’s what people don’t get about me: I don’t collapse when life kicks me in the teeth. I get up, dust myself off, and systematically destroy everything that hurt me. It’s a family trait.
Jake’s got it too—that Middleton stubbornness that keeps you fighting even when the odds are absolute shit.
I pulled out my backup laptop—hidden under the mattress because paranoia isn’t a character flaw when you work in corporate surveillance, it's a survival instinct.
“Someone leaked those tapes,” I said, fingers already flying across the keyboard. “Someone with access to Eric’s personal hell. Someone who wanted me to take the fall.”
But who? Sia had a motive but her tech skills were basic. Helena had the psychological warfare mastered but wouldn’t expose her own dirty laundry. Corporate rivals wouldn’t know about private family trauma videos.
Unless someone had been playing a way longer game than any of us realized.
“Twenty-four hours to save my brother and prove I’m not a backstabbing bitch.” I cracked my knuckles. “Challenge accepted, motherfuckers.”
I dove headfirst into the digital rabbit hole, pulling up every illegal program I’d ever coded. Time to find out who orchestrated this clusterfuck and why they thought targeting the Middleton family was a smart life choice.
My brother was literally fighting for his life because someone wanted leverage over me.
Eric thought I’d betrayed him with information I never even touched. And somewhere out there, the real puppet master was probably laughing at how perfectly their plan was working.
Well, fuck their plan sideways.
Time to remind everyone why you don’t mess with an MIT-trained hacker who’s got nothing left to lose and a dying brother to save.