Chapter 1

"I know you're upset about your project getting ruined," Samuel Chapman said, his voice low and urgent.

He gripped my wrist tightly, stopping me from calling for help.

"But if you make a scene now, Sophie's internship evaluation will be ruined!" he added.

"The selection for the exchange program at Astulan headquarters is tomorrow. You can't let the director think Sophie has a character issue and ruin her future, can you?"

As soon as I heard that, a cold horror raced through every inch of me.

He still hadn't figured out that we both had matching external hard drives.

The one the coffee ruined wasn't mine.

It was his, and inside was everything he poured into chasing the national architecture design gold award.

I knew exactly what the Golden Dome of Excellence National Architecture Design Competition meant to Samuel.

He was the most promising young designer at the company, but he was still pretty green.

If he could win the gold award this time, the company had promised to fast-track him to project director and let him lead his own team.

But if he lost, according to the company's promotion rules, he'd have to grind it out for at least another five years.

So when Samuel, his eyes red and pleading, asked me to help him fine-tune the rendering parameters one last time, I didn't even hesitate.

After watching him pull several all-nighters for this project and seeing how close he was to achieving his dream, I was willing to take on the last bit of pressure for him.

But as he handed me the silver external hard drive, I noticed another identical one sitting on his messy desk.

It was labeled with a pink bunny-shaped sticky note that read, "Sophie Edwards' Internship Portfolio."

When he caught my slightly puzzled look, Samuel's tone grew a little awkward.

"Sophie's laptop is way too slow. It keeps crashing whenever she tries to run renders, so she's been using my workstation," he explained.

"Don't overthink it. There's nothing confidential on the drive. She's just the daughter of my mom's friend, and she's new to the internship. I'm just looking out for her; that's all," he added.

I kept quiet, pushing down that uneasy feeling I couldn't quite name, and plugged his hard drive into the workstation.

The first thing I did was replace the desktop wallpaper of Sophie, looking all innocent and sweet, with a photo of Samuel and me from our last team-building trip.

Then I got down to work, focusing on the final parameter adjustments and optimizations for his massive model files.

Render optimization is an incredibly meticulous process. Every tiny tweak to a parameter can affect the final image's quality, so I found myself running endless tests and comparisons. I was completely absorbed, spending the entire afternoon on it.

Little did I know that just swapping out that wallpaper would end up dragging me into a mess I never asked for.

After sitting at the workstation for over three hours, my eyes were dry and my neck was stiff. I got up to grab a glass of water from the break room and stretch my legs.

As I walked back from the break room, I caught a glimpse out of the corner of my eye. Sophie was huddled with a few other interns at their desks, pointing in my direction and wearing barely concealed smirks.

I frowned, a sense of foreboding creeping over me.

And sure enough, my gut feeling was right.

When I saw the "Unrecognized USB device" error pop up on the workstation screen, my heart dropped.

The silver external hard drive just sat there on the desk, its shell splattered with a huge dark coffee stain. The coffee was still dripping off the edge.

I whipped my head around, my glare could cut glass as I stared at Sophie. My voice shook with anger. "Did you touch my stuff? Do you even know what's on that hard drive?"

Sophie flinched for a second, then cracked up.

She laughed so hard she nearly fell over, turning to her friends and throwing her hands up. "See? I told you she'd totally lose it. I called it.

"Come on, pay up! You lost the bet, cough up the cash!"

Then, with a flirty little bounce, she hurried over to Samuel, who'd just rushed in, and gave his arm a playful nudge like she was showing off.

"See, Samuel, you still don't get your girlfriend at all! I told you she's got major control issues. All I did was 'accidentally' spill my coffee and mess up her hard drive, and look, she totally freaked out! Now cough up the cash!"

I couldn't believe my eyes.

Samuel dodged her hand and rushed over to me, his voice hurried. "Samantha, don't be mad. Sophie saw you swap out the wallpaper and got a bit worked up. She just wanted to mess around a bit, but her hand slipped and the coffee went everywhere."

"Don't blame her, okay? You know she's just a kid at heart, always a bit scatterbrained. And honestly, you probably shouldn't have changed that wallpaper. Of course that was going to set her off."