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“And once on my home network…” Owen shook his head and stared up at his condo. “Even though you broke a shitload of laws, and violated the digital access agreement you signed at ACS this morning, I’m actually kind of impressed.”
“I don’t want your approval,” I replied. “I want my fucking two grand.”
Now he turned to regard me. The smug look on his face—his handsome, used-to-getting-what-he-wanted face—was infuriating.
“I don’t think this is about the two grand.”
“It really, really, is,” I replied.
“I think you want to get fired.”
I choked on a laugh. “Why would I want to get fired? This is my dream job.”
Owen’s smile widened. I found it hard to meet his emerald gaze. His eyes seemed to bore into me, seeing more than just what was physically sitting on the bench with him.
“Jude’s not the only one who researched your background. I saw the job interviews you’ve been on in the last couple of years. Visa. Helix. Alphabet. I know people at each of them, and I made some calls. They all said the same thing. Your interview was going well, until you decided to act a fool. At Visa, you demanded a salary twice as high as they pay their senior engineers. At Helix, you insulted the interviewer’s laptop model. And at Alphabet you were practically signing the employment contract, then abruptly threw down your pen and began criticizing Google’s data-collection practices.”
“I have high standards,” I said defensively. “I won’t work for a company that steals everyone’s data and then acts like they’re the good guy.”
Owen slowly shook his head, his smile never fading. “Nah. It’s not that. I mean sure, maybe you do have high standards. But I think you intentionally blew up each of those interviews.”
I tried to laugh, but it came out forced. “Why would I—”
“Because,” he said, cutting me off, “deep down, you know you’re not good enough.” He gestured in the air like a philosopher making a point about life. “You’re terrified that when you go work for a big company full ofrealcoders, you’ll realize that you aren’t as amazing as you think you are. And worse, everyone else will realize it too. So you self-sabotage your chances before it ever gets to that point. Better to lose out on the job because of some bullshit reason than to fail because of your own inadequacies.”
I couldn’t speak even if I wanted to—my throat was frozen shut. Owen shook his head softly and gazed up at his condo.
“This nonsense about the rooftop deposit? It’s just your latest excuse to blow up your dream job and go back to your cave of self-pity. Boo hoo. You helped build a billion-dollar cryptocurrency and then cashed-in way too early. Let me tell you a secret, Amber: nobody cares. Everyone in this townalmosthit it big. I know a dozen guys who claim they thought of Twitter or Uber first. Whatever. The past doesn’t mean anything. All that matters is moving forward. What you’re doingnext. “
Those green eyes cut back to me again. Seeing me. All of me, like I was naked in front of him. And he smiled again.
“You want me to fire you, so you can go home and tell people that the founder of ACS is an asshole who can’t take a joke. Well, I’m not going to give you the satisfaction.”
He reached toward me. For a split second, I thought he was going to grab my Alienware laptop and smash it on the ground. Instead, he grabbed my cell phone.
“Unlock it,” he said.
Unsure of what else to do, I tapped in my code and gave it back to him. He swiped his finger across the screen, searching for something. He opened an app—my crypto wallet—and then pulled out his own phone. He held his phone above my screen, then handed it back to me. I saw a new transaction in my wallet. Owen had deposited two thousand dollars worth of crypto.
But it wasn’t Bitcoin, or Ethereum, or Dogecoin. It was two grand worth of ArgoCoin.
“Figured you’d want to get some of those back, huh?” His grin was victorious and cruel. “Just a few hundred million more to go and you’ll be back where you started. See you in the office tomorrow.”
He laughed as he walked away from the bench, and all satisfaction I had felt for hacking his condo was long gone.
14
Amber
I almost didn’t go to work the next day. It would have been so much easier to stay in bed, doom-scrolling Twitter on my phone while contemplating whether I would last longer as a Starbucks barista or In-N-Out burger-flipper.
The only thing that forced me to my feet and into a clean pair of jeans was the smug look on Owen’s face last night. I would do anything to wipe that grin away.
I was going to prove him wrong. I wasn’t trying to sabotage my chances here.
But I did, a voice whispered in my head.That’s why I hacked his work laptop and his condo, and it’s the reason I blew up my other job interviews at other companies.
Melinda waggled a finger at me when I came through the door. “We take securityveryseriously here, Amber. Compromising a coworker’s equipment is a tremendous violation of trust, both corporateandpersonal. However, Owen insisted I give you a pass.” She arched an eyebrow at me. “But your file system access will be audited from this point forward. And any future infraction will be handled not by me, but by the police.”
