Alpha's Regret: The Seventh Time was Forever

Chapter 72 – Change of Plans

"Sera, it’s time for lunch, and I won’t let you skip it, especially after you already skipped breakfast this morning," Corvine’s voice carried from the entrance, calm but unyielding, the kind of steady authority that never needed to be loud to be obeyed, as he stepped inside and adjusted the knot of his tie with a quiet, habitual precision.

The day had dragged on longer than expected, and the maids had filled him in the second he returned ready to drop her at the hospital later, their worried whispers making it clear that she had not moved from that chair for hours.

The glow of Seraphine’s monitors washed the entire room in a cold, electric blue, turning the polished surfaces metallic and the shadows sharp enough to cut, while the soft hum of processors and cooling fans created a mechanical heartbeat that felt more alive than the rest of the mansion combined.

Her fingers moved across the keyboard with relentless speed, lines of code cascading down the screens like digital incantations, each command crafted to pry open Daisy’s phone and rip apart whatever secrets she was foolish enough to think were safe.

She had done this so many times before that it barely registered as a challenge anymore, slipping past firewalls the way other people slipped through unlocked doors, unraveling layers of encryption with patient precision, bending devices to her will until they surrendered without even realizing they had been invaded.

But today, every attempt dissolved into nothing, every exploit returned blank. Every backdoor led to a wall.

She leaned closer to the screen, her brows knitting together as irritation coiled tight in her chest, because Daisy’s phone did not look hacked, manipulated, or hastily wiped, but professionally sterilized, like someone had dismantled it at a molecular level and rebuilt it from scratch without leaving a single fingerprint behind.

No traces of Zane, no messages hidden in archived folders, no metadata lurking in forgotten corners. Not even a faint digital echo that could hint at a conversation.

For the first time in a long time, Seraphine felt something she rarely allowed herself to experience, and the sting of it burned sharper than she wanted to admit.

was ahead

closer now, and she startled slightly before glancing up to see him already inside her room, his presence solid and grounded against the storm

his eyes scanned the screens with quiet concern, trying to decipher

haven’t eaten or showered, so unless you’re planning to show up looking like a ghost from a

hand across her temple, frustration tightening her movements as she exhaled slowly, trying to organize the mess in her head

him to retreat and give her space the way he usually did when she was deep in work, but instead he walked around her desk and leaned slightly against

more supportive. "I might not have the technical solution you’re looking for, but I can at least carry part

raced as she searched for the simplest way to explain something that felt layered and risky. "There’s someone covering Daisy’s tracks, and it’s not amateur work or a lucky guess, because this is deliberate and clean and way too precise. I don’t know if she paid someone

couldn’t get a surname or any solid details, so he asked if I could hack her phone and pull something useful. That’s exactly what I’ve been trying to do, but every time I get close, it’s like someone’s already been

into her chair, staring at the stubborn screen as darker thoughts crept in uninvited, because maybe Daisy was not the one cleaning her mess at all, and maybe

just some random accomplice hiding behind a first name, but someone like her, someone who understood the system from the inside out and knew

a phantom in the network, or someone

for once Seraphine

watching her expression. "If he can remember anything else about this

pack most of the time, and there are dozens of people with that name, so how are we