Chapter 9

It was a chaotic Monday morning for both the Reyes's and the Lore's.

Following the previous morning at the hospital, which ended with Ramy and Haerin – who no one had noticed disappear over the course of the night – coming in to confirm that the fire was indeed due to the Q Group's main family. This had led to the two families agreeing to meet at the Reyes's company building to discuss the merger with a steady haste. This was later followed by the news of the culprit behind the hacking of the Reyes' mainframe a few days earlier reaching Marcus. Unsurprisingly, it was also the Q Group. He wasted no time in informing Hanna and John, especially since the likelihood was that the merger plans had been found during the hack, perhaps even the real intention behind the whole affair.

This was more reason to hasten the public announcement to give the decision more context before it looked like a desperate retaliation. A fake context of course.

Joshua had stayed naïve to the developments, having locked himself up in his room and playing out his original plan. Somewhat miraculously, he had gone through five full length, classic romance novels while also sleeping thought half the day and the whole night. There was little limit to the young man's genius. He just blindly agreed with his parents when told the family were going to the Reyes's company building for and meeting in regards to the Q Group before meeting Penelope at the hospital for lunch. Joshua had simply put it down to the possibility the notorious group could be behind everything; in a way that was the truth, however far too oversimplified, as he was to find out.

Henry was a little more aware of the situation having gone to the office for half of Sunday, Ramy had updated him on the truth of the fire during his break. How he was not remotely surprised to hear that his morning work had been cleared for him to attend a meeting with Lore family. The Q Group had attacked their only daughter and injured innumerable people as by product. It was not something he was shocked to hear; they had done far worse before with a lot more discretion. This was clearly a warning to the Lore family, just as the hack could have been to his own parents, of course with far less severity seeing as the Reyes' were not the main contender against the Q Group. While not far off, they were still behind the Lore family.

It was only on his drive to the office he realised that he had never brought up the horror of a marriage meeting his parents had set him up on, he was still half hoping it was a joke because their family shouldn't be so desperate to give their son to the Lore's for the sake of the merger. Clearly Joshua was as lost as him, which only confused him more; he couldn't help but wonder where on earth either side had thought of the idea. It was absolutely horrendous.

Just the memory of the encounter gave him shivers.

But all that aside, even if him and Joshua had changed the plan last minute to speak first about a solution, Henry wasn't sure about what he should do now.

After having seen the other man after finding out his sister was hurt, he couldn't imagine him being remotely coherent on the situation – an assumption that could only be described as spot on ¬– there was little chance he had even thought of such things. They were supposed to have spoken on the phone on Sunday to discuss solutions to present to their parents on Monday. However, Monday had come and no such talks took place. Henry couldn't deny that he had completely forgotten about it all, spending the whole day suppressing all memories of the ordeal. He had only remembered in that moment.

Was he supposed to go with the old plan and respectfully decline to the Lore's while telling his family they had completely lost the plot?

Or was he supposed to keep quiet because…?

Well, he could not think of a particular reason to stay quiet. Finding a stable foundation was imperative for the merger, and with the recent events it was clear that time was of the essence. The faster the two men shot down the horrendous idea, the faster everyone could find a more plausible alternative and truly begin the merger. The logical option was obviously to outright say the verdict of the marriage meeting, regardless of whether the other party had even thought about it. Especially since they both had the same response to the preposterous situation.

That all being said, the more he thought about it the more Henry found himself inclined towards silence. The entire idea of bringing this up was starting to feel a little daunting. He wasn't exactly sure why but not saying anything was sounding amazing to him.

In the end, after a long deliberation with himself, he finally decided to go for the better of his options: not bringing the topic up until Joshua does.

By this point, he had already been in the elevator up to his parents' office, so lost in his thoughts until finally coming to a decision that he was shocked to find that riding with him was Samuel. His older brother noticed the sudden acknowledgement and looked up from his phone. "Nice of you to finally notice. Did you hear yesterday?"

"About the hack culprit or incident with the Lore kid?"

What Henry hadn't expected was to be met with a shocked look. "So you really don't know? What time did you leave?"

"I only had a half day, was only in from 11 to 4. What happened?"

"The Q Group left a secondary virus on the system that we over-looked and it started liquidating our assets at around 6. They were trying to dig us into bankruptcy."

Samuel Reyes watched as his younger brother quickly took in the information he had relayed, not in the least bit surprised by the scowl that grew on his face. "A second virus? Over-looked? Are you insane, it was me and mom who were leading the team! We fine-combed over everything personally, each, thrice. That is impossible, no matter how tired we were, there is no way we could have missed something like that."

The older brother nodded, he knew far better than to question his mother's and brother's programming skills, he had seen first had what damage they could do when it was called for. It was the reason it was so hard to hide any of his own scandal coverups from his parents, Caroline would always find out. Of course he knew there was no way that was possible.

"Obviously," he replied as they door finally opened, the two stepping out. "That is why I am telling you now. Obviously we will tell the Lore's the truth, but for everyone else in the company outside of our family and Ramy, that is the story we are telling them. The one's who notice the lie will be smart enough to keep quiet. It should help dig out the mole."

There was no discussion on whether it had been an inside job or not, there was no need for such talks. It was the only possible way for anyone to upload the virus. Unless extremely aware of the Reyes' security protocol, which only the family itself and a couple senior employees were aware of, one would be unlikely to know just how much security one goes through to enter the building. Most people have to go through x-ray scanners, everyone's belongings too via a conveyer belt. After that, one must swipe their ID card before going through a biometric scanner.

This was where things got more complicated. The obvious checks are the facial recognition and fingerprint. What most employees seemed unaware of – despite everything having been written within the security part of their contracts – was that their weight, height, fashion record, long-distance retina scan and phone scanner.

Of course, privacy was still a major factor, they couldn't look into personal data, however they were free to compare readings and records with the medical records from every employee's compulsory, monthly health check-up as well as data they had collected a few days prior, none of which was accessible to event he security guards in charge. This was the most important aspect, the system would verify whether there was any great deviance from day to day that could imply something wrong, but that was not enough to be approved access to the building, there were a team of highly skilled speed-reading, security operative with the role of not just memorising the likeness and characters of every employee between them, but also to read through the discrepancy report and choose whether to give each person the seal of approval or not.

This human analysis – debatably the biggest vulnerability within the system of self-running observations and identifications – was what made the whole thing works so amazingly. Caroline Reyes was a genius programmer, a prodigy of sorts, well acquainted with a vast number of different minds like hers, both with ideals that agree with her and refute hers. And while every single one of them wanted to one day make a programme that was so complex that it could analyse like the human mind but better, Caroline had come to the conclusion that it was somewhat impossible until artificial intelligence could reach a level where it could experience and interpret information like a human.

In fact, that had been the basis of her security system when she had first planned it. It had been the reason why she had created such a complex programme that was capable of finding and reporting deviances without saving personal data long term.

Both Henry and Samuel were more than aware that with the security, even if the system hadn't picked up someone trying to get into the building unauthorised, one of the people would have, as big as the company was, even between the Reyes family they could name every employee, the security personnel were more skilled than them. It was impossible for someone to have gotten in. The thought of it was as preposterous as cover-story of the ordeal, if not more, or any attempt of a remote download.

It was a mole; someone had brought he virus software in with them and personally uploaded it from a computer or hard drive terminal.

The two brothers were the last to arrive. Unexpectedly, the first words they were met with were a chastise, mainly to the older brother. "Sam, you were supposed to leave just after us. What took you so long?"

"Why are you only telling me off, Henry came in with me," the man almost whined, his actions near childish from the embarrassment of a telling off in front of the Lore's. Marcus saw through him and narrowed his eyes on his older son. "Because your younger brother doesn't live with his parents, unlike a certain someone."

"Bah, me and Meena decided to live at home, we could have chosen not to. Besides, Henry is the only one out of everyone here that doesn't live in their family home. You do know that Archer is the same age as me?" Hanna and John couldn't hold back a light laugh.

Joshua found himself extremely confused, when had his family gotten this close with the Reyes? He wanted to turn and ask his brother but only saw a playful glare building between Archer and Samuel Reyes. Of course he could not ask his parents what on earth was going on, and his brother seemed to preoccupied to even notice him. In the end, there was only one other person he could turn to.

Meeting Joshua's glance immediately, Henry could only stare back in confusion. The two beautiful men were in as much of a loss as each other. Henry really had no clue when their families had gotten close, and it didn't seem like it was the first time for their older brothers to meet in a casual situation – since they were both the heirs of their companies, it was not too out of the way that they had been previously acquainted, still a little unbelievable for them to be so close that they could throw one another under the bus to their parent's.

Even though no real facial change could be seen on either of them men's faces, they had easily understood the others glance seeing as they were mirroring each other, the look itself not needing to last any longer than a fraction of a second.

The glace was not missed by their expectant family members, only fooling them into thinking the two's relationship really was good enough for marriage.

Unfortunately, before the topic could even come up, another problem arose.