Chapter 5: The Truth in the Cloud

The next morning, I asked Sloane Mercer to meet me at the library café.

Rowan called it reckless. Miles called it a bad idea in a very expensive coat. I called it Tuesday.

“You’re not going alone,” Rowan said.

“I’m not going alone.” I held up my phone. “Jace will be two tables away. Campus safety knows I’m there. And I’m wearing a microphone.”

Miles stared at the tiny recorder clipped inside my collar. “You set this up overnight?”

“I couldn’t sleep.”

“You could have told us.”

“I told you what I needed.”

That quieted him.

Sloane arrived late, flawless in a cream coat and boots that probably cost more than my monthly rent. She sat across from me and smiled as if we were discussing a club fundraiser.

“I’m glad you reached out,” she said. “This has become embarrassing for everyone.”

“Then stop posting about me.”

Her smile barely changed. “I don’t run Whisper.”

“No. You just stand near every camera.”

I slid a flash drive across the table. It contained a fake HavenLink build, designed by Rowan after I told him exactly what I wanted: a tracker hidden in a prototype permissions folder, obvious enough to tempt someone who thought Evan Cole was desperate.

“You want access,” I said. “This gets you into the user-testing environment.”

Sloane’s eyes lowered to the drive. “And what do you want?”

“My scholarship left out of this.”

“I can’t promise what other people do.”

“You can promise what you do.”

For a second, something cold showed through. “Miles deserves a team that doesn’t make him choose between charity and reputation.”

“I’m not charity.”

“That isn’t how his father sees it.”

I left before my anger could make the microphone useless.

Back at the apartment, the fake folder was already open from a Foundation guest-network address. Jace had a separate discovery: his old camera card had been swapped at the party. The original card, found in a drawer of his equipment case, showed Sloane entering our building lobby two nights before the hotel video appeared.

“She knew the layout,” Jace said. “She knew where to point a lens.”

Miles stood by the window, holding his father’s withdrawal agreement.

“We have enough to report her,” Rowan said.

“Not enough,” I said. “She’ll say it was somebody else. We need her to explain why.”

Rowan’s eyes narrowed. “What are you planning?”

“The donor gala. She’ll be there.”

“No,” he said immediately.

Miles said nothing, which was worse.

I followed him into the study and shut the door behind us. “Say it.”

He kept his back to me. “My father will be there. Sloane’s family will be there. If anything goes wrong—”

“Something has already gone wrong.”

“I know.”

“Then why are you standing here like I’m not part of the decision?”

He turned. “Because every time I see Rowan touch you, every time I see you look at him like he’s the only person in the room, I want to pull you away. And I hate that about myself.”

The honesty stopped me.

He laughed once, without humor. “There. Useful enough?”

I stepped closer until his shoulders met the bookcase. “You don’t get to make yourself the villain because you’re scared.”

“Evan—”

“You don’t get to decide I’m safer without you, either.”

My fingers caught the edge of his loosened collar. I straightened it, slowly, because I needed something to do with my hands.

Miles went very still.

“I don’t know what I feel yet,” I said. “But I know I’m tired of both of you acting like wanting me means you have to control me.”

His gaze dropped to my mouth. “I’m trying not to.”

“Try harder.”

I stepped back before either of us crossed a line we had not named.

That night, the tracker sent a new alert.

The fake design had been downloaded through an encrypted network registered to the Hart Foundation’s donor gala.

Sloane was waiting for us there.

I spent the afternoon turning the threat into a plan. The false prototype contained permissions that looked valuable but only recorded access time, device fingerprints, and network routes. Rowan added a harmless decoy feature that would force any user to approve a second dialogue box. Miles arranged for the gala invitation list to include us as HavenLink representatives without telling his father why.

Jace photographed the original memory card, its serial number, and the swapped card beside it. Priya connected me with a student legal clinic that could receive the files if I stopped answering messages. Every step made me feel less like a subject in someone else’s story.

At dinner, Rowan said, “If you go to the gala, I won’t stop you.”

“That sounded painful.”

“It was.”

Miles gave a reluctant laugh, then sobered. “I won’t stop you either. But I want a way to know you’re safe.”

“You can know where I am. You can’t decide where I’m allowed to be.”

“Fair.”

Rowan reached for the salt, and his fingers brushed mine. Neither of us moved at first. Then he withdrew, slow enough that it felt deliberate.

I hated how much I noticed.

Later, alone in my room, I replayed Sloane’s phrase:

charity and reputation.

She wanted me to believe I was an inconvenience attached to Miles’s money and Rowan’s loyalty. The thought burned long after the apartment went quiet.

I opened the gala confirmation email and typed my name in myself.

No one could send that RSVP for me. That was the point.

I clicked submit and watched the confirmation arrive.

The day before the gala, the university sent a notice saying HavenLink’s access remained limited pending review. I printed it and added it to my evidence binder. If Sloane expected shame to make me vanish, she had badly underestimated how stubborn a scholarship kid could become.